


Saved by Syphilis

by DG_Fletcher



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Book of Mormon
Genre: "Realness", By Inferno's Light, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dr Bashir I Presume, Hurt/Comfort, In Purgatory's Shadow, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Motivations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:50:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5334794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DG_Fletcher/pseuds/DG_Fletcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a group of Universe-jumpers switch out with a couple people from DS9, the end result is why nobody should ever leave Garak unattended with misinformation, like, ever. </p><p>The first 3 chapters are "Alex is stuck as Garak and vice versa" Then they switch back, things build, people -talk- about syphilis, and 10, 11, and 12 ends with "Garak outsmarts God".</p><p>Starts in "In Purgatory's Shadow" and "By Inferno's Light" and ends with stuff from "Dr Bashir, I Presume" and ends WAY different than the show. XD</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reyka_Sivao](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyka_Sivao/gifts).



> This thing is "DG's FailNovel#1 meets DG's GiantNovel#2 meets DS9". The Rape/Noncon is the FailNovel#1 chars. FailNovel has vampires, there are vampires. GiantNovel has gods, there are gods. 
> 
> Alex has a phonetic accent I put translations for a lot of it. If you're Mormon/really Christian... it's not meant as -disrespect-, but um, proceed with caution? And chapter 5 is pretty R rated. 
> 
> "Wutao" is to Cardassian like "human" is to Earthling. There are a LOT of Cardassians in the RP and not all of them are actually -from- Cardassia, they're just the same species, so we ended up with "wutao" as a species name.

KIRA NERYS:

"KIRA TO SECURITY!" Kira yelled. 

Odo came on the line. "What is it Major?"

"I have an unidentified person in Ziyal's quarters." Kira said.

"Ziyal??! Srsly?" the unidentified man said. "How do I end up as Ziyal?!" He looked himself up and down and patted his clothes like he fully expected them to feel differently. He was tiny man, about Kira's height, and also had Ziyal-like markings of being half Cardassian and half Bajoran, but completely indeterminate age. Anywhere from Ziyal's youth all the way up to ancient, judging from his very-white hair. The clothes were Cardassian design, if a bit on the pastel side. 

Odo stormed into the room. 

"Hi Odo!" the man said, almost like he was happy to see the man, then realized he was under arrest. "This is awkward."

"Indeed...." Odo growled. 

"He kidnapped Ziyal!" Kira yelled.

The man held up his hands apologetically. "It's not kidnapping. It's called Shurikai, where you just jump dimensions at random and show up arbitrarily as people, usually based on relationships between them." 

Odo folded his arms and glared at him. 

"The last time I popped up in your universe, I showed up as Gul Betreva and that was... bizarre. Gryphon was stuck as Ziyal and Alex made a very strange Dukat. Alex makes for a rather strange anything." 

Kira stormed up to him. "WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT DUKAT?" she demanded. He didn't back down when she got in his face, and up this close, he sort of reminded her of Kai Opaka. Almost. 

"Has he sided with the Dominion yet?" He said it like he fully expected it to happen and also like it should be common knowledge. 

"No he hasn't sided with the Dominion!" Kira yelled. Yet? Yet was bad. "Who else showed up here with you?" 

"Um." Keedo said. "Good question!"

\----

ALEX: 

POP 

Alex was in a tailor shop. 

THAT tailor shop.

He cracked the joints in his neck and the sound was ever so slightly different. That would make it a Cardassian neck pop. He was both missing his glasses and aware that it wasn't a variant on his face.

"When they said ih was geean ouh aa hand," he said, trying and failing to force words to come in a non-slurry accent, "they were noaa kidding," 

(Translation: When they said it was getting out of hand, they were not kidding.)

He -looked- like Garak. He couldn't -move- like Garak.

This was bad. Bashir was a doctor (or possibly a Changeling, depending on when in the show he'd popped in. Garak's shirt was one of the more low-key, nondescript ones, which meant it wasn't Season 1 or season 2) and either way, he would notice any minor variant in movement--and Alex's movements weren't that minor. 

And who else was who on this Shurikai anyway? 

He didn't have anyone he was currently crushing on to be his variant on Bashir. He wasn't currently pissed off at anyone in any way that would make for a decent Dukat. 

He stumbled halfway across the room before reminding himself to try -not- stumbling. That required a lot of attention. The build and center of gravity wasn't the same between Alex and Garak, but it wasn't too far off, which was good. Getting stuck in someone with Bashir's build or Dukat's build would probably have put him on the floor already. But the slightly-twisted-in left leg and off-kilter balance was psychosomatic. 

He caught sight of a mirror. "Aie feel laike aie'm embarrassin' yeh," he said to the reflection.

"Did you get the translation done?" That'd be Bashir. Great. 

Don't move don't move don't move --don't fall over!-- don't move don't move don't move. He set his hand on one of the merchandise tables and used it as the 3rd support to keep from toppling over.

It occurred to Alex that he could still synchronize with his "Warehouse", his world-running computer, hopefully without any of the Q noticing, he just didn't have time to run anything other than prewritten programs. He found one of the auto-programs attached to the DS9 show, grabbed a file off it, and lip synced with the exact words from the show itself. "I'm afraid I disappointed them. I think they were hoping that message they picked up would contain the key to defeating the Dominion. You should've seen the looks on their faces when I explained to them that it was a five-year old planetary survey report." 

He could feel his tongue in lip-sync mode not quite wrapping around all the vowels that appeared to be being stated and hoped Bashir wasn't the sort to read lips. 

Don't touch yer mouth don't touch yer mouth don't touch yer--he's looking away! He ran the back of his hand against his jaw. 

"A planetary survey report?" Which was exactly what Bashir said on the show. This was going well.

"That's the look exactly," Hopefully Bashir couldn't read lips. Alex's "thaa" and Garak's "that" were of different lengths and Alex royally screwed up the lip sync on that one. 

"I would have thought you'd be a little disappointed, too. After all, it could have been from one of the survivors of the Cardassian fleet that was lost in the Gamma Quadrant." 

Could he get away with just agreeing? Probably not. "Oh, I'd given up hope of ever finding any trace of them long ago." That one was slightly better synchronized, but Bashir was giving him an odd look, and while "limp? what limp?" was easy to hide by just not walking at all, the balance movements "Bashir'd probably call them 'tremors'" he thought to himself, were a lot harder to subdue. 

"That's unfortunate," 

That wasn't in the show.

Ziyal was supposed to be in on this conversation. 

They were supposed to be having lunch. 

He'd probably missed lunch. 

Oops.

Wait. That meant it was -that- episode. 

That was ChangelingBashir. 

Great. NOW what?? Maybe he did have a Bashir somewhere and that person was stuffed into the Gamma Quadrant concentration camp? Not that he could think of anybody. 

Then there was Enabran Tain = parent and/or mentor. 

He had 3 to choose from. Wittian. Aaron. Laura. 

His Delco father. His human father. His human mother.

Any of those three could easily fill the relationship slot with Enabrin Tain and get themselves be stuffed into the JemHadar Concentration Camp.

Wittian would probably be the best off, but he wouldn't know to be nice to Bashir and Martok and anyone else there. That would either end with the entire planet exploded and an untrained, confused Delco on the loose, or he'd just wander off and Alex'd still have to go find him. 

Laura knew the show, or at least had watched it. She knew Bashir. Other than "Mom's in a Concentration Camp", she'd probably be the best off for everyone all around. 

Aaron... Aaron would either be toast or a complete disgrace to the Atheist glory of Cardassia by spouting off halfazillion crazy about Jesus something something Holocaust Jewish blah blah blah insanity enough that Martok'd probably kill him for being insane. 

Changeling Bashir looked at him like he was expecting Alex to say something. Why did Garak have to be so damn talkative anyway? There was nearly zero one-word responses to anything ever said to him in all the files. 

Alex licked his teeth in the most Very Alex, very Not Garakky motion and ChangelingBashir caught it, frowning. 

Ooh hey! THAT audio-processing program! He mentally grabbed it off the shelf of the Warehouse and flung it at the ChangelingDoctor.

Bashir's beeper went off. Alex could use his own voice on the communicator. 

Through the mental-access program and through the communicator, Alex said: "Eh, we haa a medical emergency on dockin baie three," 

It worked. 

Changeling Bashir whacked the beeper. "I'm on my way," he said. 

Now there actually was a line from the show Alex could sync with. 

"I have dresses to make, trousers to mend. It's a full life, if a trifle banal. And do tell Captain Sisko that I'd be more than happy to decode any Cardassian laundry lists that come across his desk."

Changeling Bashir nodded and walked out. Alex let got of the edge of the table he was using for balance and promptly toppled backward, right next to the mirror. "Sorrey," he said to the decidedly not-his-face looking back at him. "Thar's reasons aie usually use maie OWN wutao form for stuff," 

Morn waddled into the store for a new pair of pants, saw him, waddled over, and pulled him up back on his feet with one hand. 

Alex liked to get drunk with the Morn from the Star Trek universe that happened to be attached to the portal system in VC. They were quite good friends as far as bar buddies went. Unfortunately, he still had the problem here of "you sound waaaay off" and the balance issues and couldn't really pull up conversation. The question "how'd you get a limp?", with the way Morn thinks, could easily be answered by "well I did -just- pick you up off the floor", and he didn't even bother to ask it. 

He had to get out of there before he embarrassed everything Garak was trying to be. 

Getting from the tailor shop all the way to the docking ring would be... fun. 

Physically doable. But EVERYONE would be watching. Absolutely freaking everyone. Also, it was -that- episode. With ChangelingBashir and their whole dreadful conversation on the runabout thingy. 

Changelings might not notice that most of the consonant lip and teeth fricatives were way, way, WAY off the mark, but between Worf and Sisko and and and... somebody'd catch him, and that was if he could stand perfectly still the entire time. Which he couldn't.

What if he could just use a different ship than the one on the show? That one had looked Federation. 

There was a Bolian one, an Andorian one, 3 Bajoran ones, the Federation one that was probably what got used on the show,and Morn's ship. He hacked the teleport grid and used that to teleport directly onto one of the the Bajoran ones. 

The chair spun around and Changeling Bashir was right there with the phaser. 

"Going somewhere?" he said. Just like the show. But the whole interior was the wrong color, wrong lighting, and wrong setup to be the one from the show.

"You were spossa be on the othar ship!" Alex said, leaning mostly on the door frame and in full "Alex Move Weird" mode before realizing whoops, shouldda followed the show.

If it weren't for the Q Continuum, he could just rewind time back 10 seconds, but Q would make this way more messy than he wanted to deal with at the moment. It was already a mess. Let's not make it much much worse. 

The Changeling looked utterly baffled. That was the last thing he expected to hear. He stood up, still aiming the phaser at him. "What are you??" he asked, in full Bashir voice. He didn't know Alex knew he was a Changeling. 

With zero pretense of trying to move like anything other than what he was, Alex went through a long string of delay motions. 

"Aie geaa the impression naiether of us are who the other parson was esspectin'," he slurred. 

(Translation: I get the impression neither of us are who the other person was expecting,)

Changeling Bashir's face read mostly confusion, trying to figure out a plan, what to do next--he'd been expecting Garak and now it wasn't--and, judging from the way the man's feet shifted a little bit and his hand on the ready to hit the communicator badge, he was trying between handling this from a "Changeling, God of the Gamma Quadrant" angle or a "Bashir, Federation Doctor" angle and hadn't decided yet. 

"What do you mean?" he said. 

Alex popped his neck and looked at ChangelingBashir sideways. "You're noaa the acshuall human Bashir, an' aie'm obviousley noaa the vary overley-famous tailer," he slurred.

"It was -your- voice over the medical com," 

Alex nodded in a messy, sideways motion that could probably be misread as mockery.

ChangelingBashir decided to play up the Federation Doctor aspect. He waved the phaser in Alex's face. "What have you done with Garak??!" he yelled.

"Issa Shurikai--" Alex started to explain, then thought of where he'd been 2 universes ago. HE'D play up the Changeling aspect! He had a sub program he'd designed years ago that let him do a "looks like a Changeling" thing between his first 2 fingers on his left hand. Well, "looks like a bright Alex-Blue Changling, anyway." 

(Translation: it's a Shurikai.)

He let himself stumble forward one step and raised his left hand up to eye level between the two of them, then ran the program. 

The space between his first finger and middle finger shifted into a warping, bright bright blue triangle of goo. 

"No Changelin' has evar harmed anothar," he slurred--and suddenly knew exactly how he was going to get out of this. 

He glanced over at the controls out of the corner of his eye. 

They were Bajoran. 

Yeck. 

But they'd borrowed half the front control panel from Cardassian design. He knew it well enough to wire it all into a 3D Macro while standing there looking at it and watching ChangelingBashir wonder what the bloody hell turned Changelings blue!

There were 3 Macros. 

Shut the door and detach the ship. 

Get down around the rest of Deep Space Nine. 

Precision Warp--yes warp, the computer could handle it when Alex knew what he was doing--to the wormhole and jump in. 

They took very little time to set up. He turned off the "fakee blue Changeling goo" program and snapped his fingers, correlating it with turning on the 1st Macro. (It didn't, it just seemed to). The ship door locked and the ship detached. 

"Aie yam from a diffren' dimension" True. "An' aie know how yar mission was goinna turn ouh," Also True. "Laiek bein' from the future. Kinda." Not quite true, but close enough. He set off the 2nd macro without making any accompanying motions to it. 

(Translation: I am from a different dimension. And I know how your mission was going to turn out. Like being from the future. Kinda.) 

"What do you mean?! What would have happened?"

"Yeh see thaa sun?" he said, just as the big bright Bajoran sun blasted into sight on the viewscreen. "Ye wouldda been Changeling Toast." 

It occurred to him right after saying that that Changelings were liquid. "Er, Steamed Gamma Goo. Whaa-ever." 

ChangelingBashir gave him the weirdest look, then looked down at all the control panels. As far as he was concerned, they were moving without anybody touching them at all. 

"So aiem' here aa save the day," he slurred. He went to snap his fingers again and ChangelingBashir went to hit the com badge at the same time, and the 3rd macro launched and they were inside the wormhole before the communications message could reach DS9, and then the wormhole static ate it.  
\---  
KEEDO: 

Back in Ziyal's quarters, Odo's com badge beeped. It was one of the docking bay security people. "Constable, Garak and Dr Bashir have just gone through the wormhole. At warp." 

"You can't go through the there AT warp!" Kira yelled. 

"They went from the docking bay to the wormhole opening at warp, then it opened, and then they were gone!" the security woman said over the com system.

Kira turned and got in Keedo's bubble again. "WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS?!" she yelled. He didn't back down and Kira had the feeling he kind of wanted to pat her on the shoulder and tell her everything would be okay and was refraining because she'd probably try to break his hand. He was kind of right. 

"They never go through the wormhole together in the sh-, er, they're not supposed to, anyway." He mulled over details, trying to remember them. "Shurikais are based on relationships. Ziyal has a crush on Garak. Garak has a crush on Bashir. Bashir has a crush on whoever happens to be around that season." 

He was doing it again with the "common knowledge" thing. Garak had a crush on Bashir? Since when? Kira mulled it over in her mind. Bashir was the only person Garak seemed happy to talk to, like genuinely happy, not just tolerating their existence. He'd probably had a crush on him since he arrived on the station. Bashir was oblivious to social relationships on a good day. He'd never even consider that a Cardassian would have a crush on him, let alone a male Cardassian. It just wouldn't cross his mind.

Kira was trying to decide if that meant she should keep the two of them apart or put them together more so they could get some decent info out of the Cardassian spy?

The man kept going. "I don't have a crush on anybody at the moment. I have no idea who would get stuffed into being either Bashir or Garak or--" He stood up and went over to the window. "Is that the one where he's the Changeling or the one where--?"

"WHAT!!?" Kira yelled, then sighed and looked over at Odo. "Forget arresting him for now, we needa tell Sisko."

They took the turbolift, and when they walked into Sisko's office and there was a com up and Sisko was talking to someone. 

Cardassian.

Damar's uniform.

Damar's rank. 

Not Damar's face, and the hair was long enough to go back into a short ponytail. Three loose strands of jet black Cardassian hair flipped up and then back down in front of his face.

Keedo backed up and seemed to hide behind Kira, watching the screen and biting his lip. 

"Where is Dukat?!" Sisko asked. 

"Dukat?" the man asked back. He paused and flicked a look at something offscreen, with a tiny smile crossing his face. "Dukat would be indisposed for the time being, and will likely be unavailable for--" he'd caught sight of Keedo on the camera and another, wider, more sinister smile appeared on his face and then vanished,"--the conceivable future." 

His canine tooth, visible in the smirk, was longer than it should be, and pointed. 

That was decidedly not a Cardassian thing. 

"Pls be from VC2 pls be from VC2" Keedo said to no one in particular. 

The man stood up off his chair and walked closer to the camera in slow, measured steps, keeping eyes pinned on Sisko the entire time. He was bigger than Damar by a fair margin, the broad shoulders of the Cardassian uniform barely covering the man's strength underneath.

"The Portuguese are here, Benjamin," he said in a voice that seemed especially designed to be terrifing. "And I will be their Nzinga a Nkuwu," He wrapped his massive, sinewy hand into a fist. "But I'm not afraid to throw in some Leopold if I need to."

(OOC: Nzinga a Nkuwu: one of the few named Africans known to benefit from the African slave trade. Leopold of Belgium: Scaryass jerk that is pretty much a Hitler to the Congolese.) 

That was also decidedly not Cardassian. Kira had no idea what he was talking about, it seemed to be utterly horrifying to Sisko. Keedo facepalmed. "Srsly?" he muttered.

"HOW. Do you. Even know about THAT?!" Sisko was more shaken than Kira expected him to be, by a considerable margin. 

The man's mouth curled up into the same eerie half-smile, showing the pointed tooth, and the camera winked out. 

Sisko sat down on the chair. "He did that on purpose. Just to frighten me."

"Yeah," Keedo said, sitting down across from him. He seemed pretty scared of the guy, too. Mostly to himself, he mumbled "I should get an 80 light year restraining order and then run like hell in the other direction." 

Sisko looked up at him. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Keedo." said Keedo. "I got stuffed as Ziyal, and THAT would make that guy Kaleb. Presumably of the VC1 variety." he shuddered. 

Whatever Kaleb had said seemed to be terrifying to both men for completely different reasons, Keedo in a personal, direct sort of way, and Sisko in a "triggered something long forgotten" sort of way.

Since they were both sitting there staring into their minds, Kira sat down too. "What happened to Dukat?" she asked.

Keedo frowned. "He was probably replaced by a guy named Leonard, and that would have made him Kaleb's breakfast."

"This is normal where you come from?!" Kira said, wide eyed.

Keedo shrugged. "Vampires," he said. "And Kaleb eats vampires." 

Sisko gave him a look that said "you're kidding, right?" 

Keedo pointed to his also-rather-pointy canine and shrugged again, apologetically. 

"So how do we get out of this?" Sisko asked. "He knows African history in ways no Cardassian ever would. What else does he know?"

"Probably a lot," Keedo curled up in a little ball on the chair. "He's here because Damar is-will-going-to-be the one that kills Ziyal-"

"WHAT!!?" Kira yelled. 

Keedo continued, seeming to do calculations of association. "But if it's anchored around him, it wouldn't have made Dukat into a vampire. Dukat's Damar's boss, so it would have stuffed Kaleb's -boss- is into there. Which means it's either centered around me stuffed into Ziyal or somebody else."

"You did say Garak and Bashir weren't supposed to go into the Wormhole, and that Bashir's a CHANGELING?"

After Keedo explained the whole Chageling thing, Sisko whacked the com and got Dax to dig for a recording of what was said on the Bajoran ship just before it left. 

The recording was all static at first, and then Bashir's voice "Going somewhere?"

When the response came, Keedo's face crinkled up in an embarrassed grin. "For the record, I don't have a crush on him!" he said. "Oh gosh," 

What the person said was "You were supposed to be on the other ship!" but what came out was distinctly mispronounced and speaker had the loud sound of something whacking the wall just under where the whole conversation was being recorded.

Keedo brushed stray white bangs out of his face. "I wonder if it's the other way around?" he said. "Great. I'm -awkward-. Yes it is a very awkward relationship. That would definitely qualify as awkward." 

The recording got to "No Changelin' has evar harmed anothar," coming out of whoever Keedo knew.

Sisko looked over at Keedo.

"Alex isn't technically a Changeling, usually, although he kind of likes Changelings and has Shurkaied as one of them a couple times. Bashir in this case actually is a Changeling because the legit Bashir's stuck in a concentration camp."  
"WHAT?!" Kira yelled. \----  
Meanwhile, in the prison camp...


	2. Chapter 2

BASHIR: 

"NOTHINGI'MDOINGISWORKINGNOTHINGI'MDOINGISWORKINGNOTHINGI'MDOINGISWORKING!!" the man yelled. A minute ago, that had been Enabran Tain, but whatever he was doing, it -was- working. He'd shifted appearances ever so slightly. A different build. A different face. Different hair. He looked like he was attempting to rapid-grow a beard on a Cardassian face that didn't want to cooperate. 

"Calm down," Bashir said, although he sort of wanted to freak out himself. This was unusual beyond the normal realm of unusual. The closest he could figure was that it was a Changeling who was having problems shifting, but that didn't quite line up, either with any of the other symptoms or his knowledge of Changeling shift patterns. "What do you expect to happen?"

The man grabbed his shoulders--gently--and looked him up and down. "You're Alexander Siddig," he said. "But you've been edited. WHO IS EDITING MY GENES?"

Bashir frowned, a bit worried that someone was mentioning genetic editing about him. "I think you've got me confused for someone else."

Martok stormed into the room, nursing a sore, possibly broken, elbow. 

Whatever was going on with the poor unfortunate Cardassian freaked out and backed up across the room. "THAT'S REAL!!?" he yelled to no one in particular.

Martok raised an eyebrow, then flinched. His eye still hurt.

"You're real." whoever this was gasped, "Like a real, actual Klingon, not just John Hertzler in makeup done by David Quashnick. You think you're ACTUALLY Martok. You might even BE the actual Martok." The man sat down on the cot and curled up. "Who the light am I supposed to be? What am I DOING here? WHAT IN HOME'S NAME AM I DOING HERE?! This isn't my Universe. This isn't my world. This isn't my coding." 

He held up his hands and a brilliant beam of overly-bright light shot down from nowhere between them, and he tapped into it like the borders between the light beam and the rest of the room was some type of computer interface. 

Whatever he was doing seemed to be making him happy. He was nodding and smiling all the way up until the beam suddenly turned bright, bright blue, too saturated to be neon. The man yelped in terror and darted away from the now bright-blue beam. 

The Breen, the Vulcan, Bashir, and Martok all followed suit, hiding from it behind the various cots. 

The beam exploded into a bit of a kinetic force field and a million little specks of light that floated and faded out like bluish embers out of a campfire. The force wasn't nearly as strong as Bashir had been expecting, little more than a slight puff. 

Looking up from behind one of the cots, Bashir saw... somebody? 

"Garak?" Bashir said. 

He'd teleported in facing Not Tain and away from Bashir. Mostly Bashir recognized the shirt and the hair. As soon as the flicks of blue transport vanished, everything in the way he was standing shifted. He yelled at Not Tain. "Fuhhin hael raelley?!" in a thick, vaguely Irish, bizarre accent Bashir had never heard. 

Bashir felt freezing cold suddenly. Whoever or whatever was happening to Enabrin Tain seemed to be happening to Garak--with no cure in sight, and even if they did cure it, that was going to haunt his nightmares forever.

Not Tain manifested by trying to change his appearance and failing. Not Garak seemed to have visible cerebral palsy. The mis-matched movements made him want to both cure it, and also hide and hire someone else to do it until his friend moved "right" again, which made him feel rather guilty.

"THAAS NASTEH!" Not Garak yelled at Not Tain, gesturing with mostly his left hand. Both hands were curled in a bit like there was slight wasting in the muscles. 

Not Tain cried out on terror, pulling the cot blanket over himself where he was curled up on the floor like he thought it would do any good. 

The man backed up to calm Not Tain down, leaning against the far wall and looking around the room. When he saw Bashir, he tried to straighten up a bit. "Sorrey," he slurred. "Aie feel laike aiem' embarrassin' 'im," he said. 

What did that mean? Did that mean he was -aware- he was inhabiting someone else? 

The man turned back to Not Tain. "Aie was esspecttin' maie mum, or maybe maie dah, or maybeh possibly Wittian. You were the lass thing aie was esspectin' aa see 'ere. Eh evan frikkin' Celess wouldaa made more saaaaanse! If this was goin' for 'induce frik ouh attack' IN WARKED. Fuh frikkin BackDoor shih." 

(Translation--> "I was expecting my mum, or maybe my dad, or maybe possibly Wittian. You were the last thing I was expecting to see here. Eh even frikkin' Celeste would have made more sense!!! If this was going for "induce freak out attack", it worked! Fuck frikkin BackDoor shit!) 

Not Tain seemed to realize he wasn't under any immediate danger. He folded up the little blanket and set it on the cot. "You seem to have mucked up my Back Door Access." he snipped, then sat on the folded blanket. 

"Garak is noaa a BackDoorAccess qalifaie parson. Thaas -nasteh-. Fuh -ee'd- be a better one" It also answered Bashir's question of "did whoever this was know they weren't Garak?" Not Tain didn't seem to be aware of it. And he was pointing in the general corner of the room where Bashir was. 

(Translation--> Garak is not a BackDoorAccess qualified person. That's nasty! Fuck, -he'd- be a better one.")

Not Tain perked up, looking over at Bashir with a look that sent ice down his spine.

"-Don'- fuhhin' do ih," Not Garak said. He meant it. He locked eyes and Not Garak seemed to be staring Not Tain down. 

"What do you suggest then?" Not Tain snipped, finally giving up. "Since you seem to know so much about Coding." he paused. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Alex," the man said. 

Bashir felt both utterly relieved to give a name to this thing inhabiting his friend--they seemed benevolent, defensive in his behalf, but oooooh dear the way he moved was hellish to watch, especially as doctor--and slightly confused as to why they'd have such an ordinary name. 

Not Tain made an odd gesture, like he was clawing his hand across an invisible table. "THAT Alex?"

Instead of confirming, Alex sort of went off on a tangent. "AIEM' NOH RELATED TO YEH!" he yelled, gesturing angry and all over the place. "If they were goin' for Awkward Mentaor, they goh ih spoh on. Yeh an' yar fuhhed' up code,"

"My Code is SACRED!" Not Tain said. 

The conversation devolved into a highly jargon-heavy game of "is not is to is not". The gist of it, as far as Bashir could gather, was that Not Tain--Elroy--had trained Alex in how to write either highly complex computer codes, or possibly universes, putting them both on level with Q, but Elroy only knew one type of code, and the BackDoor function in it had a tendency to cause excruciating pain to people who "qualified". As in it was probably a good thing for Garak that Garak didn't qualify, and Bashir wondered what would have happened if Elroy figured out that he did. 

When everything had calmed down, Elroy went to work studying "code", and Alex flopped down against the wall on one of the cots. 

Having finally created enough space to mentally identify the man as "Alex" instead of something akin to "monster possessed Garak", Bashir went over and sat down next to him on the cot. 

"I could fix that," he said, pointing down at the man's bend-in leg. 

Alex gave him an eerie side look that, to a doctor, seemed to be a head movement that would imply compensating for a messed up trapezius muscle. 

"Ih's psychosomatic," he said. "Ih gehs worse when aiem' aver so slightly uncomfortable with whar aiem' at." 

He gestured over to Elroy and raised his voice enough Elroy could hear him. "Thaas whaie ih was so damn bad whan yeh tried aa run the BackDoor Function again. Fuh yar frikkin BackDoor."

Elroy looked up, frowned, and went back to the thin beam of light that was his computer terminal.

Alex dropped back to conversation levels. "Garak's greah, BackDoor's hell. The one taime aie showed up as Sherlock aie was a splattey." he seemed to think it was funny. 

(Translation--> Garak's great, BackDoor's hell. The one time I showed up as Sherlock I was a splatty.)

"How, erm, bad is it normally?" Bashir asked. 

Alex dragged his tongue over his teeth. "Mossa the taime, people juss think aiem' drunk," he said. "Aie do legit laike Kanar."

(Translation--> most of the time, people just think I'm drunk. I do legit like Kanar.)

That was a relief. 

"If you're -here-," Bashir wasn't sure if there was an answer to that question, "Where is...?"

"Stasis or doin' something awesome in a holodekky thing thaas noa obviously a holodeck. Switching ouh 1-for-1 with The Warehouse is hella technical." He looked up at the ceiling and Bashir sort of flinched. Nobody sat like that, and the way the hair moved, for a split second, it did sort of look like Garak leaning at an awkward angle. 

(Translation--> Stasis or doing something awesome in a holodeck-y thing that's not obviously a holodeck. Switching out 1-for-1 with The Warehouse is hella technical.)

He seemed to be checking the equivalent of whatever his computer system was. A faint ping-ping-ping emanated from the air right in front of him. Bashir reached up to where the sound came from. Elroy's computers were visible beams of light. Alex's were something only he could access. 

"Fuhhin hael, raelley?!" Alex said. "This happened in the lass univarse we were in, too." he said. He turned to Bashir. "Wanna see?" he asked. 

Bashir nodded. Alex flicked his left hand up and a panel became visible with dozens of blips of information flying down it, and a yellow box in the bottom right hand corner that said "Keedo, yellow alert, Keedo, yellow alert," in time with the pinging sound. 

"Lass taime, ee nearly goh squished baie a toad," Alex said, like it was typical. He reached across the keyboard with his left hand and flicked the square. 

A large, detailed tree diagram popped up on the top of the screen, and under it, the image of a Cardassian Bashir had never seen before. Incredibly strong, with slightly too-long hair in a ponytail.

"Sarisly?" Alex said. "An' ee's VC1. The dangerous varsion. Fuh."  
\----  
OBRIEN

This was supposed to be a nice simple -break-, but so far, literally nothing had worked whatsoever the entire trip there and nothing was working the entire trip back, either. 

Nothing had been really working for OBrien in quite awhile.

Keiko was down on Bajor on a botany event and would be for another 2 months. Nothing really quite ever worked on Deep Space Nine the way OBrien would have preferred. Some of it was that it was old. Some of it was that Cardassian technology and Federation technology didn't quite line up, (lining up Lieutenant Kleeft's Federation-design species-compatiblility grid with a basic Cardassian socket sounds easy, right? Nope. Theoretically, it shoud just require a basic convert system. In practice, it required lining up the basic convert system incorrectly, but incorrectly in a highly specific way. Otherwise, the whole thing would break and fry him when he set it from day biorequirements to night biorequirements) and this sort of dreadful hell was OBrien's NORMAL.

The war with the Dominion and the Cardassians had mostly been going... weird the last few days. According to the general populace, it was basic leadership switchover, but according to conversations with Sisko and Dax, that switchover, from Gul Dukat to a Gul Kaleb (what kind of name was that for a Cardssian anyway?) had a lot more danger behind it. 

And then there was Bashir going missing WITH GARAK, so now he had no one to complain to. 

According to Odo, it wasn't "with Garak", it was "something took over Garak and -that- thing had kidnapped Bashir", but OBrien didn't have any details, and he very much didn't put it past the Cardassian to actually go out and DO something like that in the first place. 

Although there was the time Keiko had been possessed by a Pah Wraith, so maybe Odo was telling the truth. 

Who knew? 

He had the whole Zambezi roundabout to himself.

The "break" was "get in it, set it on auto pilot to a Koberrian trade post, drink your tea, catch up on your reading, relax, take a nap off schedule, enjoy yourself, when you get there, trade a package of qualified Federation equipment out for new Cardassian piping conduits. Much, much, much less time consuming than switching them ALL out for Federation ones, which is what would have to happen due to size differences between the two, and replicated ones had a tendency to break down fairly quickly. Ask OBrien how he found THAT little tidbit out. 

The alarm on the ship went off. 

He looked up from where he was reading and saw--giant orange energy field that spun and warped and the Zambezi was heading right for it. 

He flicked the shield up, hit a distress call, aimed down, and finally just threw the ship in reverse, but that idea occurred just late enough to hit the field sideways. 

He could see the field entering the ship. He backed away from it, especially because everywhere it touched, the ship was vanishing into it. Either that or it was an opaque field. He really, really didn't want to know. 

Uncomfortably, he found out anyway.

It hit and it felt like halfway between being stretched like a balloon and being pelted with little fuzzy pellets that may or may not have been made out of moldy spaghetti. 

As soon as it was all over, he was sitting in the Zambezi, and the interior was on fire. 

"Of course it is!" he yelled at nobody. Mostly it seemed to be the fabrics and other things with a low burn temperature, as opposed to a dangerous engine fire working its way inside, but still. Fire bad. 

He whacked several of the control panels and got the fire suppression system to finally start working, then went to the control panel and viewscreen.

There was a planet. 

Right there.

Approaching fast.

He was crashing. 

"WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!" he yelled, flipping switches and dials and half dozen other buttons as the roundabout went careening down through the atmosphere. At the last second, he hit the antigrav thrusters and the ship very gently came down--onto a forest that was ALREADY BURNING. And raining. With lightning.

"You've got to be kidding me!" he cried, throwing up the shield and hoping the rain would naturally put out the fire before he ran out of battery. 

It worked. 

Then there was an earthquake, or what seemed like an earthquake. He ducked under the control panel and waited for it to quit shaking while the ship collapsed into mutilated metal nothingness around him. It was brand new and he'd crashed it in who the hell knew where?

"WHY DO THESE THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME??!" OBrien yelled.

"Because you're a main character," 

"YIPE!" OBrien startled so hard he whacked his head on the control panel. He got between the chair and the dashboard and saw the silhouette of someone coming toward him through the dust. There was a click echoing in the mist, and then laughter. The click sounded familiar, but he couldn't place the sound. 

The dust cleared to reveal a massive Cardassian, tall and visibly broadshouldered, even under the uniform. The most unique thing about him was the slightly longer-than-normal hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and a few strands of hair that flipped forward instead of back like they should.

Gul Kaleb.

"Come on, let's get you out of here," he said, pushing the chair out of the way like it wasn't bolted to the ground, bending the melted bolts in the process. He extended a very gray hand and OBrien tried to move around him. 

Broken leg. This was compounding to be the utterly worst day of his life. 

Kaleb cracked his knuckles, stepped over a pile of burning rubble--and picked him up!

"OIE!" OBrien yelled. "What are you doing?!" He couldn't quite get down, and with his leg broken, he couldn't quite wrestle his way down, either, even if the techniques did work on a Cardassian.

"Nothing," Kaleb said, and kept walking, out of the rubble toward his own small roundabout-like ship.

"But what about the Zambezi?!"

That got the man to stop. "You guys named it the Zambezi? Srsly?" He turned around and ran his finger over part of it. "Oh you poor little ship," he said, then broke off a small flake of paint and stuck it in his pocket and kept walking. 

He plopped OBrien down in one of the chairs and they lifted off and out of the planet and started heading for Deep Space Nine, with Kaleb checking back with his command central a couple times.

"Project Meta's currently a go." he said. Whatever he was doing, it was with their full support and he wasn't defecting. 

He stood up, streched, and went over to a pull up bar. No wonder he was strong enough to carry an overweight human without really seeming to care much about it. 

"What's so unusual about naming a ship the Zambezi?" OBrien said, testing his luck in conversation. 

The man dropped off the pull up bar and frowned. "It's just that it's a river with Victoria Falls in it, and now it's paste." 

"How do you know so much about Africa?" The rumor that his knowledge of it had already sort of freaked out Sisko was apparently true. 

In response, Kaleb grinned. He had overly pointed canine teeth, like a vampire. 

They had an incoming signal from DS9. When he flipped on the viewscreen, it was Dax. 

"Dax!" Kaleb said, smiling a bit too creepily. "Is Sisko available?" 

She looked from OBrien to Kaleb and back again, then nodded, moving to connect him on on the comlink. 

Kaleb continued. "Great! I need a conference room, you, him, and anybody else that wants to be in on this epic meeting to meet me at, say, 1500 hours after we get his leg fixed," he pointed at OBrien with his thumb. "I've got a power point presentation to show everybody."

Dax blinked, then nodded, looking at the two of them in confusion.

"And I need to dock this thing," 

She sent him the docking bay lineup and he led his little ship over there.

"What's a power point presentation?" OBrien asked.

Kaleb looked up from the control panel. "Did I seriously call it that? Whoops." And went right back to what he was doing. 

At 1500 hours, Sisko, Dax, Kira, Odo, OBrien, and Worf were all around a conference table. At 1501, Gul Kaleb walked in and switched on the view panel to an image of Cardassia Prime.

"History-" he slammed his hand down on the table and it cracked. He looked at it like it completely threw off his line of thought for a second, then continued. "Is written by the victors." 

He locked eyes with each of them in turn, going around the table without saying anything, smiling juuuuust enough to show the overly-sharp tooth on one side. 

"It's why Bajor's Freedom Fighters are Cardassia's Terrorists. It's why America's the hero after bombing Nagasaki." He went on, listing ancient military heroes way back in Trill history, Klingon history, Earth history and walking around the room with each of them.

"Literature, on the other hand," now he eyed OBrien, "doesn't follow that rule." He was standing across the table from him. He backed up, gave the table a rather terrifying look--then Karate Chopped it in half--and pushed the pieces aside to stand between them, a little closer to OBrien than would otherwise have been possible with the table right there. 

"That portal you went through has a 98% chance of killing you. Crashing a roundabout onto Netrius 7 has a 86% chance of killing you. The bombs dropped by you had a 65% chance of hitting any one location in that entire area"

"YOU BOMBED ME?!" OBrien cried.

"And you -lived-," Kaleb said it like it was obvious. 

Sisko started to talk and Kaleb--in the center of the room, now that he'd cracked the table in half--spun around and fired a ballistics pistol right at him. 

It clicked and nothing happened. 

Kaleb fired it into the half-broken table and it went off. Then he slid it over to Odo while everyone sat in stunned silence.

OBrien recognized the sound. He'd fired it at him back on Netrius 7 and it had clicked then, too. 

"You live to the end of the show," he said. He backed out from the middle of the table and went back to the presentation screen, images flicking by behind him.

"As much as I'd like to see a universe--rule a universe--with armies as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as steel, that's just not how -your- universe works."

Now they were getting to something -he- was passionate about. 

"Your Voyager is sitting off in the Delta Quadrant TALKING its way out of the Borg. That's like talking your way out of malaria! THAT'S NOT HOW THIS WORKS. THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS!! And yet, they do it. That thing is a fucking tsunami plague zombie attack and Janeway -talks- her way out of it."

The image on the screen settled on the Dominion logo. 

"If this were history, Dukat was -right-. Side with the victors. Side with the guys that know what they're doing. Side with the people who have epic amounts of military competence, aren't averse to biological testing, and have the skill required to rule coherently"

"But this ISN'T history," he whacked the table with both fists on "isn't" and it cracked more. "This is literature." He eyed Jadzia. "The only one of you who doesn't live to the end of this is because of actress kerfufflery."

He stepped back from the table, clicking off the presentation slides and eying Sisko. "The Portuguese are here, but by pure dumb luck--we're China." 

(OOC: partially due to tech, partially due to population size and government type at the tmie, and partially due to immune systems, unlike the Americas and Africa, China was unconquerable by European forces in the 1500 and 1600s.)

\----  
BASHIR: 

Back in the Gamma quadrant, Alex pushed himself up off the cot. "Okey play taime's ovar," he said.

Elroy looked up from what he was doing for a split second, then ignored him again. 

"Do ye wanna geaa ouh a here or not?" Alex slurred. 

Bashir sort of wondered if Alex's problem was muscular in nature or if he was -stimming-, in this case, leaning on the right leg and rocking on it a little bit. He'd said it was psychosomatic and got worse the less comfortable he was with the situation. Stimming could count as psychosomatic if no one ever called it stimming and left him alone about it. 

"Look, we're in another univarse. Keedo's up againss frikkin' Kaleb, an' the lass taime somethin' nasteh happened aa Keedo in a parallel univarse aa this one we enned up trashin' the Gamma Qadrann, so leh's go!"

Elroy frowned. "I'd like to go to a better place, thank you very much. This whole place is..." he sniffed in Martok's general direction "...savage."

"Haey!" Alex slurred. The tipping back and forth grew slightly worse.

Elroy continued, speaking mostly in technical jargon about how the code in the universe was broken and a messy and cracked and had "Qs" in it.

"Ya, they live here," Alex said. "If ye wanna meet them, go bug Picarr on the Ennerpraise. 

"They're entities?!" Elroy yelled. "Oh. John de Lancie's role."

Alex frowned at him. "Yeah, buh here, thar laiek us, slaightley diffren' lookin."

Elroy looked Alex up and down.

"What happened to the blue?" he asked.

"Aie'm frikkin' Garak." he said, grinning. He flopped back on the cot. "Cause ih's noaa laike avery frikkin' person in maie social group hasn' popped up here ah leass once in the lass however long." 

(Translation--> It's not like every person in my social group hasn't popped up here at least once in the last however long.) 

"What do you mean? I don't remember any of that happening," Bashir said.

Alex popped his neck and looked at him at an odd angle. "Thar's famous stories an' shih. If we pop up with the Kirk/Spock/McCoy, aim always Scottey. Super stable. If we pop up with the Ennerpraise D, ih's never stable. Nobody fihs anywhere precisely enouh aa stay put. 

He continued. "Terok Nor, howaver--" 

Bashir noticed that he referred to it by the Cardassian name and wondered what brought THAT on, 

"--we're in an' ouh aa thar all the taime, diffren Univarses, to the poin' whar Path's effin' pissed at Garak 'cause he's been stuffed as him fifty zillion an' a half times."

"How many parallel universes do we HAVE?" Bashir gasped. 

Alex gave him the most eerie smile he'd ever seen. 

"Zillions." 

He leaned back against the wall and it thunked a bit. "Ask Worf abouh ih when yeh geaa back home." (OOC: TNG 7x11 Parallels)

Bashir gulped. He'd been to the Mirror Universe. Now there were apparently MORE Mirror Universes? 

Garak had been utterly terrifying in that one. Sadistic. Unthinking. Brutish. Nightmare fuel!

Slightly more nightmare fuel than Alex's weird movements inhabiting Garak's body, if that was to believed. 

Alex spoke loud enough it was partially directed at Elroy. 

"Aie wrote a univarse an' ih CRASHED. Aie wroe annother univarse an' ih crashed nasteh." He eyed Elroy. "An' then aie wondered if ih was me or the shih code type. Aie foun -better code-, more backups, a better system NO BACKDOORS an' now maie univarse is fiiiiiiine."

(Translation--> I wrote a Universe and it crashed. I wrote another universe and it crashed nasty. And then I wondered if it was me or the shit code type. I found -better code-, more backups, a better system, NO BACKDOORS, and now my universe is fine.) 

Elroy glared at him. "But it's crass and unbecoming." 

"You haa no aiedea what my univarse looks laike."

Elroy sniffed and brushed imaginary dust off his sleeve. "You allow people to sin at random. They live in wanton abandon. Alcohol. Adultery. SIN."

Alex leaned forward and grinned. "AIE sin." he said, "Aie yamma fuhhin alcoholic." He held his hand up in a Victory/peace sign that was sort of horizontal. 

Elroy looked positively horrified. The mention of Kirk earlier got Bashir thinking. Kirk's ship -met- Greek gods. Then there were Q. Was Elroy something that thought of himself as the Christian god? 

"Are you both gods?"

Elroy sniffed. "Of course. Although I'm better than him."

Alex grinned, licking one of his teeth. "Tryin' not to quote Ghossbussers" he said, "buh yeah." 

"Well if you're GODS can't you get us out of here?"

"I'm TRYING!" Elroy yelled. "Do not evoke the wrath of me!"

Alex shoved himself off the cot and stumbled over to look at Elroy's beam of light. 

"Yeh goh 16 typos an' 2 obvious "bugs" in the firss 3 lines. Also, ye don' haa Admin Privledges here."

"I'M GOD!" Elroy yelled.

"Aie don' either." Alex slurred, starting to lean and catching himself on the ceiling beam. "Noh yar univarse." he leaned into what Elroy's personal space and sort of yelled. "Look, yer basically writing a virus!"

"I like viruses. Excellent for taking out gay people."

Bashir couldn't tell if Alex's hands were in a "bent inward and psychosomatically slightly palsy'd gesture" or a "wtf now I want to strangle you but I won't" gesture. 

"EH?!" Alex was so frustrated he ran the back of his left hand against the edge of the chufa a few times. 

That did sort of look like a stimming of sorts, now that Bashir'd thought about it. Not everything lined up perfectly with the diagnosis, but "nonneurotypical computer programmer GOD with cerebral palsy" was sort of an interesting premise anyway. 

"Ye know whaa?" Alex said, taking Bashir's movement-disorder diagnosis up a few levels for a few seconds trying to let off some of the frustration. "Fuh ih." 

He stumbled into the middle of the room in a full limp, looking around, possibly at his own invisible Universe Computer screens, finally grinning and licking the edge of his tooth. 

"Ihs laike a dungeon," he said, with a bizarre sparkle in his eye that was almost Garakish enough to freak Bashir out other than the whole "nonneurotypical movements" thing. 

He ran his hand up against the chufa again and turned around to the rest of the room.

There was a Breen, a Vulcan, Martok, Bashir, Elroy, and himself. 

"See, lass taime, the rogue goh ye ouh, buh ye haa somewhare to -go-," He said it and then seemed to realize whatever he'd said made no sense and seemed to bat the words away with the back of his hand. "Er, Garak's kinna a rogue. Buh this taime..." 

(Translation--> See, last time, the rogue got you out, but you had somewhere to -go-. Er, Garak's kind of a rogue. But this time,)

He turned to Elroy and the possible stimming increased "yer BackDoorAccess an' maie firewall puh the rounnabout on the other saide aa the Gamma Qadrann. So this taime..." 

He turned toward Martok "we're goinna haffa TANK." 

(Translation--> your BackDoorAccess and my firewall put the roundabout on the other side of the Gamma Quadrant. So this time, we're going to have to TANK.) 

He snapped his fingers and for a few seconds, the rocking sort of stopped. A large map of the entire base appeared like it was being projected onto one of the walls, with three potential lines running from their cell to various out points.

Bashir stood up and walked over to it, looking at it and passing his hand over it a few times to see where the projection was coming from. "How'd you do that?" he asked.

The stimming was back. "Aie get to be the rogue!" he grinned. He did look people directly in the eyes without problem. Then less happily: "or possibly the healadin,"

Bashir had no idea what that meant. The official definition of "rogue" was "dishonest or unprincipled" and that didn't make any sense in context. Combined with whatever "healadin" was, it seemed to be a title of some type.

Alex licked his tooth again. "Is anybody goinna be mad if I stick the Vulcan as ranged?" he said, like it was some kind of inside joke. "Space alf ranger. Nevar miine, that was rude sorry." The Vulcan was likely out of ear shot anyway. 

Bashir noticed that specific weird tooth-lick gesture was attached to random references only Alex would get. Goes Bussers? Ghost Bussers? Ghost Busters? Ghost Blasters? Not important right now. 

He looked at the map.

Their cell was clearly labeled with a red X. There were three potential escape routes labeled. 

Everything else seemed rather jargon heavy. 

Mobs? Boss? Hitpoints?? The reddish dotted line going down one of the hallways was labeled "Tank Tactics", the blue line was labeled "Rogue Tactics" and the green line was labeled "Ranged Tactics--still need Tank"

Bashir ignored the jargon and just looked at the map. With his fast-acting mind, he could think of two or three other possible escape routes, but the problem was the guards right there in the hallway. 

"The problem is we don't have weapons," Bashir said. "We're completely unarmed."

"Aie can geaa us weapons," Alex said like it was somehow obvious. He ran the back of his hand against his face and snapped his fingers--and was instantly wearing enough military gear to take out a small army. All of it ballistics. It sort of looked like gear from a Vietnam era holoprogram he and OBrien tried out once. 

Which would make that look like Garak equipped with Rambo gear.

Bashir hid his face in his hands for a moment, and then, still without looking at him. "Where did you get THAT? If you can summon a Rambo gun, why can't you just unsummon us out of here?! You're a GOD!"

The stimming increased a bit, rattling all the ammo. "Ih's a defaull program. Aie can only run maie defaul programs or I'll seh off the Q. Noh in the mood aa deal with thaa raie now."

They nitpicked over details. The "Rogue" route depended too much on luck, their "Tank" (whatever "Tank" meant; to Bashir, it meant a big canister with things in it, like an oxygen tank,) was Martok, who was fairly beat up already, half blind, and refusing to let anyone fix him, which left the "ranged, needs tank" route. 

"What about this route?" Bashir asked, showing him one of the unlabeled ones he'd seen.

"Ih goes to a teleporr pad, buh thar's nowhere to teleporr off to,"

The "Rogue" line led to a bunch of roundabouts. 

"Walk here, teleport there, get on one of the ships, escape." Bashir said.

"Oh." Alex said. "eYeah," 

They showed Marok. He liked it, although he made quips about how much superior phased weapons were over ballistics.

"Rambo vs Klingon Warriors. Thaa'd be a heckofa fighe." Alex said. (Translation--> heckofa fight.) 

They showed the Vulcan. "This seems highly logical," she said.

They showed the Breen. The Breen seemed to probably maybe possibly like the idea? It was hard to tell with Breen. 

"What about him?" Bashir pointed with his thumb at Elroy.

Alex went through a long series of frustration movements before landing on "I'm still mad aa him over the 'gay' commen. Garak's gay. Bie. Whaaever."

Bashir did a double take. "What?!" he said.

Alex leaned away and bumped the Rambo Gear against a cot. "We're noaa havin' this conversation righe now," he said.

"But.. when did that happen?" Bashir ignored it. Garak was GAY? 

"Since alwayye. Thaa's how ih works. We're noaa havin' this conversation righe now." Alex repeated.

Now Bashir was mostly talking to himself. "How did I miss that? I'm a doctor! I should have noticed, or something! How does that work with the whole exile situation? What about--" 

Alex gave him a look, emphasizing each word with a slight stimmish twitch. "Zip ih. -Later-." He pushed himself up off the ground and Bashir thought he heard him mention "shouldn' aa said anniething..."

He handed off the gear to Martok, who figured it out, mostly. At this close of range, the trajectory between a phaser with minuscule gravity and a ballistics with a great deal more gravity amounted to two or three millimeters at most on the target. The kickback would be hell though. 

There was also a shield device Alex summoned out of default that would keep the JemHadar's phasers off of them. 

Escape was... theatrical?

Alex stumbled up to the doorway, grinned, did the lick-teeth expression again and tapped the door handle with his pinky, all excited about something. "LOCK PICK!" he said, grinning. "Ih's a rogue thing, naver mine." (Translation--> never mind)

Martok opened the door and blasted down the JemHadar like they were things out of a Rambo Movie, while their phaser guns fired and then cut out at a distance away. Not deflected, not splaying like Star Fleet sheilds, just stopped. 

The alarms went off.

Alex tossed the Breen a small electronic device. The Breen aimed it at the ceiling and ripped a hole in it behind them, showering the following JemHadar with ceiling rubble--and clipped the power to the the alarm system while they kept going.

Bashir was surprised (and relieved!) to find that even with the weird and the limp, Alex could actually keep up just fine. It was stumbly, but up to speed.

The Vulcan dashed over to the teleport device and input a few things, then dashed over to the teleport pad. 

The thing she entered worked and they beamed right over to inside one of the runabouts on the other side of the base. 

Bashir had been trained in how to drive this particular model!

He grabbed the controls and they lifted off, putting the shields up as the ship fired after them. 

Alex got under one of the panels and had the Breen toss him the device back. 

"What are you doing?!" Bashir said. 

"Ihssa Sonic Screwdraiver, plus a cool thing Scotty figgured out awhile ago with the warp access, attached aa the Iconian Gateway network." (TNG2x11, DS94x23)

Bashir dodged a fighter ship coming straight for him. OBrien, Odo, Dax, and Worf had all nearly ended up dead trying to destroy an access point to that network and here Alex was just merrily building one out of a warp access panel and a ... "A sonic what?"

"Doccer Who." Alex said, scooting out from under the dashboard. "Aie borrowed ih." He licked his tooth again. 

The Iconian gateway panel opened up in front of the ship and they went from flying up over the Gamma Quadrant base to a completely different atmosphere. Pink. Swirly. Green flecks. And 8x the amount of gravity. The ship sputtered and protested trying to keep upright.

"Fuh, wrong address," Alex said. He whacked the dashboard with nothing but his finger, and one of the monitors changed on Bashir's side. "Punch in the standard address for Terok Nor, aie stuck up a translater," 

Bashir typed in the "address" for the area around the wormhole.

They ended up nowhere near that.

There was a GIANT spinny nebula way off in the distance, and everything else was blank.

"What address did you put in?!" the Vulcan said. "THAT'S THE ENTIRE GALAXY." 

Bashir frowned. He'd typed the Starfleet address exactly correctly. He didn't -get- those kind of things wrong. 

Alex sort of sat on the dashboard. "Somebody take a screen shoh aa thaa," he said, grinning. 

Martok stormed up and looked out at the whirling wheel out there. It was so far away all the stars blended together. "Well you got us out here, can you get us BACK?!" Everyone was staring at -Bashir- instead of Alex, and they sat glaring in awkward silence for a few seconds before the Vulcan piped up. 

"Did you enter the Starfleet official address numbers or the Cardassian official address numbers?" she asked.

Bashir scowled at the monitor. Alex did refer to it as "Terok Nor". He entered the -Cardassian- digital address for Deep Space Nine and the wormhole and they popped out right outside the station. A little on the close side. Like, 3 seconds from whacking into one of the docking moorings. 

"Aieya!" Alex snapped his fingers and the docking clamp sort of phased out and they went right through it. 

"We apparently picked the exact wrong place to park Deep Space Nine when we moved it at the beginning of the setup with Bajor." Bashir said.

Alex was ever so slightly stimming again. "I'll geaa you a map so thaa does noaa happen again," 

The com connected and on the view screen, there was Sisko, Dax--and Kaleb. Bashir noticed Alex was trying very very very very hard to just not move at all and it was almost sorta working.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elroy tends very Mormon God. Anti-LGBT, anti-alcohol, and "Gods create worlds and teach it to other people" is semi-religion canon.


	3. Chapter 3

KALEB: 

In his quarters on Terok Nor/Deep Space 9, Kaleb replicated a stack of white paper, pencils, a pen, and scotch tape.

The computer happily complied everything except the tape. He ended up with a scotch neat, a scotch on the rocks, a cassette tape of a Scottish person talking, and a data pad that was a book by Scotty before finding out the computer wanted him to say "sticky tape". 

He had to remember not to hit the wall in frustration. Back home, the house was plaster and lath. Between his fist and the wall, wall wins, hand loses. Here, the wall was a three millimeter piece of paneling and a million wires behind it. Hand wins. A little too well. Don't hit the walls here. 

He pasted blank paper all over one of the walls and clamped a pencil between his teeth while doing pushups. 

Two pushups in, he jumped up and scrawled "WTF TO DO ABOUT KEEDO?" on one of the papers and let his hand write out a huge list of possibilities before plopping back down to do more pushups. 

He'd killed Keedo already. 

What was he doing back here? Back alive? 

The man was vampire, but more than that, he was a vampire who'd put all his "points" into manipulation. Under Keedo's powers, all Kaleb wanted to do was bow down to him, kiss his fragile hands like he was some kind of god. 

There was no god. 

There was only himself and his body, and when it was all over, it was all over. 

He replicated a mirror. 

Oh.

Oh hi self.

You're gray. 

With scales. 

BOO!

He secretly thought this was the coolest thing ever. 

He loved his previous body immensely, in a way no one understood. The closest he'd found were online discussions of how people loved their -pets-, and caring for this body was like going from owning a fussy, spoiled Siamese cat to rescuing a beautiful gray pit bull. 

Whoever "lived here" before was cruel to it, straining it too far, filling it with alcohol and shirking nutrition and hydration. In his human body, Kaleb was usually the healthiest person in the room. His human body watched all the other human bodies, laughed, and longed for something undefined.

Here, every little bit meant something--and the body responded with epic gratitude. 

His human body expected regular appointments with the massage therapist, which Kaleb was all too happy to arrange. 

The Cardassian body hadn't seen a real massage therapist in -ever- and the endorphin rush from all the muscles being unlocked after decades of being knotted up, crying for release and being ignored all these years sort of make Kaleb high.

The liver loved him. The feet thanked him. The spine praised him for a cheap, 10 minute chiropractor fix. 

Hydration was exactly like giving water to an abandoned rescue pit bull instead of just filling the cat's water bowl for the umteenth time. 

And oh wow was it a pit bull. 

Cardassians weren't descended from fragile tree primates. They'd come up off the ground, seeded by some alien way back when, combining the benefits of being bipedal with a big prefrontal cortex with genes for stability and long term reptilian resilience. Mammalian mice lived to be 2. Turtles the same size lived to be 50. The hair didn't fall out. The skin lasted forever. The mind was faster. 

This place was -amazing-, but what did he do about Keedo? 

The door dinged. He ripped down the brainstorm paper and kicked it under the bed. 

"Min!" he said, for "come in".

It was some Cardassian he'd only seen in the view screen once, leaning up against the door frame.

"Firss off, if ye ever watch the show or shurikai here on another adventure, aie'm on shurikai, yarr on shurikai. Aie move weird an' you're 3x stronger than Damar," he trudged into the room and sat down in the nearest chair, noticed the mirror right there, sort of rolled out of the chair and stood up, going to a different chair. Kaleb exchanged glances with himself in one of the other mirrors in the room. 

(Translation--> First off, if you ever watch the show or Shurikai here on another adventure, I'm on Shurikai, you're on Shurikai. I move weird and you're 3x stronger than Damar.) 

"Move weird" was an understatement. It was like watching Jack Sparrow after he'd downed a couple gallons of Cardassian kanar. "Weird" didn't do it justice.

"Is "shurikai" the term for what happened here?" Kaleb asked, standing fully upright and looking down at the man. His glorious pit bull of a body was ever so slightly taller than his beloved pet cat human body--and he was secretly wearing insoles, not that anybody would know that. 

He was the easily the tallest, most intimidating person in the room, and this guy was sitting anyway.

"eYeah, ihs-" he stopped and looked at something in the corner of the room. He shoved himself up off the chair and stumbled over toward one of the tables, stopping to talk to a vase. 

"Aie kin see you," he slurred, leaning on the table. 

The vase did nothing.

As much as Kaleb really wanted to say "dude, it's a vase", interrupting schizophrenics was never a good idea. And in the Star Trek universe, it might very well -be- a sentient vase. 

The man licked his teeth and spread his fingers out on one hand. Between them became bright blue changeling goo for a second. 

The vase reciprocated, turning into brown goo and dripping off the table and becoming Odo.

"Okey, so ih's juss you, okey than thaas faine," the man stepped back a few feet and then flopped down on Kaleb's bed, mucking up the very flat, wrinkle-free setup he'd done and bumping the pillow out of alignment. 

"I was sent here by Sisko to keep an eye on Kaleb. So far, he hasn't done anything unusual. -You- on the other hand," Odo growled at him. 

"Aie'm onna shurikai!" he said. 

Like Odo would know what that meant. 

"You're Odo," Kaleb said. "The child. The Founders want you home, you know, but for plot related purposes, I suppose I want you to stay here."

The Cardassian looked up at him from the bed. "Were you intenning aa go with the plot?" he asked. 

"I'd like to break the plot-" He looked down at the pencil he'd just accidentally snapped in half on saying "break", "But this world is run by protagonist-centric morality."

"You find what the Founders are doing to be -moral-?!" Odo demanded. 

Kaleb stepped forward, bearing down on the changeling's personal bubble a little bit. 

He'd -always- wanted to do something like this, and the linguistic patterns back home in California just didn't allow for it without sounding insane. 

Coming out of a Cardassian on the other hand, it would be lovely.

He slowed every word, stepping forward at all the right times until it became a terrifying whisper, half a foot from the Changeling's face.

"You have your way, I have my way." he gestured with his hands to the ship and then to the mirror, and took another step forward. "As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."

The other Cardassian looked up from the bed. "Thaas Nietzsche," he said. He flopped back to a fully prone position and made a victory sign with his left hand. "Whoaaver fighes monssers shoul see to ih thaa in the process, ye don' become a monsser." 

(Translation--> "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." A different Nietzsche quote. The VC1 Kaleb/Keedo story fills the cultural slot of America's Ayn Rand book culturally on Alex's world, except it's "Nietzsche vs Humanism" as opposed to Ayn Rand's Objectivism.)

Kaleb suddenly loved this place more than he'd thought was possible. A Cardassian was QUOTING NIETZSCHE BACK AT HIM. That would -never- happen back home. Everyone back home was an idiot.

He wanted to own this man for awhile, keep him here, question him, use him as not -entertainment-, but psychological fulfillment of sorts. 

Earth? What was Earth and his universe compared to this? 

"Odo, shoo." Kaleb said. 

Odo gave him a look like "yeah right, not happening." 

The other Cardassian snapped his fingers right up against his face and made an odd facial expression. Odo's com badge went off and it was Sisko needing something or other. 

The Cardassian's badge went off as well, same message, and he seemed to point his tongue at his tooth and smiled. It wasn't a vampire tooth, it was just... a tooth. 

Odo frowned at Kaleb and hit it back. "On my way," he said, storming out. 

"Aie'll chah' with yeh later," the Cardassian slurred, rolling off the bed and hitting the ground with a thump, then pushing himself up and stumbling out of the room.  
\-----

BASHIR: 

OBrien contacted Bashir over the com system. 

"Doc, you've -got- to come see this!" it sounded like he was yelling through something with a beat, and happy about it. 

"Is it a medical emergency?" Bashir asked.

"Well, no, I mean, Garak does have a limp." he yelled. 

Nobody'd told OBrien about Alex. What was that insane Delco up to now? "WHERE ARE YOU?" 

"Computer, teleport me to OBrien's location," he said.

It sparkled him into a dark room, loud with a beat that thumped in the floor, with hundreds of people crammed in there all jumping to the rhythm, and neon lights flashing across the ceiling and the holodeck generating wild light shows. Everything smelled of way too much alcohol and way too much wild party. 

Bashir wasn't even sure which of these people were holodeck created and which ones were actual people. The outfits all looked like people who walked in out of Quark's Bar. Mostly. There were multiple purple humanoids Bashir'd never seen, and a multilimbed fuzzy black something or other behind the bar in the holodeck, shaking a drink with tiny hands, and snuggling what looked like Leeta under one big arm and Rom under the other. 

And in the center of the room, on stage, Alex chanting to a beat into a mic. The chorus started and he was all. over. that. stage.

Bashir covered his face in his hands and hoped he'd wake up eventually. This was unbearably vicariously embarrassing. 

OBrien bumped his arm and he peeked through his fingers at him. "What got in to Garak?" he yelled. 

"Alex," Bashir said. "Literally,"

He had to put a stop to this or this would ruin the reputation of his friend forever. He pushed his way through the gyrating crowd toward the stage, leaving OBrien with zero actual explanation.

Other than the "I can't believe this is happening what would Garak think of this oh dear you can't just...!" Alex was quite engaging. He'd pick someone in the crowd and then target the stanza of the song right at them. 

Odo got a deep involved phrase about admitting your love to someone. Complete with an eye flick at Kira who was arguing with Jadzia about this entire event and paying Alex no attention at all. 

Nurse Galati got a random stanza that was apparently so personally meaningful he teared up. 

Nog got something about standing out and chasing your dreams something something and a flickering image of the Starfleet logo flashed behind Alex for a split second, just enough for Nog to "get it". 

Worf got a clever line about spaceships and the whole ceiling blacked out to look like outer space with the Defiant blazing past with Deep Space 9 above them and the wormhole ripping open behind him, all in time to Alex's hand tracing it through the ceiling. 

Great. He'd either planned this completely or could program the holodeck in real time. Either one wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility. (OOC: song is Choice Millionaire by Poets of the Fall)

The whole crowd cheered on seeing DS9 above them, one of the purple humanoids screaming right in Bashir's ear accidentally and he ducked, which got her grabbing him and trying to bump her hips on him. 

This was terrifying!

"HAAIIIE! Aie do laike, 2 more songs an' than ih's karaoke, so be thinkin aa whaa ye wanna sing," 

(Translation--> HIIIII!! I'll do like, 2 more songs and then it's karaoke, so be thinking of what you want to sing.)

This had to be a nightmare. The one and only "important" person that wasn't immediately visible in the crowd was Sisko, and now -everyone- had heard the bizarre speech pattern. When it was sung, accents had a tendency to fade a bit. Spoken, he was a garbled slurry mess. Not that the off-kilter walk wasn't already going to cause problems.

The room blacked out and the dense beat to another song started in the dark.

A light flicked on right on Alex chanting out the lyrics. Solo. Obviously with all the attention on him. Looking like Garak. The whole crowd cheered. 

Bashir tried to get away from Purple Woman and it didn't work very well. The chorus started and the room lit up. It was -huge- now, brightly lit with a huge far away ceiling like something from a sports arena. 

The purple woman let go of him and spun him around and Alex was crouched on the stage aiming the song right into him.

He knew why Nurse Galati'd teared up. This wasn't just something random a dimensional traveler was singing because it was a fun song. The Cardassian eyes. The clever face. The are you a spy/aren't you a spy wait what? The six million layers of mystery. Garak always having some kind of ace up his sleeve. That was this song. 

Right then. 

To him. 

Outside the "extreme culture shift" part (giant. rock concert. srsly?), it felt like Alex wasn't even there. 

The drum and bass beat felt like it synchronized with his heartbeat. The crowd cheering dulled to a nothing in the background. It was a tunnel vision between him and a wild dream-state version of his friend pushing words into his head. 

The itty bitty part of his sense of self that wasn't locked into the hypnosis of the experience tried to inform him it was crowdthink, heartbeats don't actually time with songs, and it was probably just holodeck programming maybe hopefully I hope!

There was a quick three-beat break, and then he was standing a foot from Garak/Alex's face. 

On stage. 

Surrounded by a sports arena worth of people. 

The previous song the stanzas were about whoever Alex was aiming the song at in the moment. With Bashir up here on stage, the song was now explicitly about -him-. 

Jadzia clapped and whooped his name. Purple Woman cheered and flashed him plum colored breasts. OBrien, way off a ways from the stage was giving him the look like "WTF do you think you're DOING?!" and he could barely shrug back before Alex stepped between the two of them and yanked him back into the tranceworld and became dreamwild Garak again. 

And it was 100% believable. 

Outside the cultureboundness of it all, the thunder beat and trance hypnotic voice was the adventures with Garak down onto Bajor about Rugal. It was the spy holodeck adventure. The way Garak walked in and saved the day when Dukat's leftover anti-insurgency program went off. Lunches. The look he gave Bashir -at- lunch. The event with the wire from Obsidian Order. 

His dreamwild friend stepped around him, behind, turning, declaring the verses' words to the crowd and demanding the chorus's words from him, never touching him, but getting very nearly close enough to almost pass his hand across his face.

Which hand it was threw the trance back a bit. Alex was decidedly left handed and Garak decidedly was not. 

Which cleared Bashir's mind enough to remember--

Wait--

Didn't Alex say Garak was gay? But... but...

Uh oh.

And then the song was over. 

The music trailed out into epic cheering and applause, and the Very Alex slightly unsettling head tilt at the wrong angle clicked in, which broke the whole mood completely and put him squarely back being able to tell the difference between the two.

He grabbed the cerebral-palsy-bent wrist and very quietly hissed "what do you think you're DOING?!"

Alex passed the back of his hand against his chufa and rocked a bit. "Aie haa no aiedea," he slurred, looking out at the crowd like the whole thing had been just as hypnotic for him as it had been for Bashir. "Heh heh. Oops." he slurred and stumbled over to Jadzia.

"Sing somethin," he slurred, and let Bashir pull him back out to an exit offstage and back into Quark's Bar. 

"You can't just -DO- things like that!" Bashir said. 

"Sorrey," Alex was putting all his weight on the railing and none of it on his feet. He'd said his off-kilter movements got worse when he was anxious. 

"I mean," Bashir sifted through half a dozen words, none of which turned into sentences, "I mean, what would Garak think?!" he said at last.

"Aie don' think aie wanna know righe now," he said. He had an idea, and was back to being confident enough to stand on one of his feet again. "Aie--" he looked around the room. "Kaleb frikked me ouh' an' aie needed aa blow off steam,"

Bashir looked at him and then back at the holodeck door. There was a line growing outside it and Quark was making money hand over fist. 

"That is NOT just blowing off steam!" he said. "You have half the entire station in there!" 

"Sorrey," Alex said again, back to leaning all his weight on one hand and sitting on the rail, brushing hair out of his face with the other, "Aie laike the stage."

He paused. "Ih -was- juss me, an' then aie remembered' Jadzia coul' sing, an' then..." he shrugged a couple times. "An' then ih goh fun,"

Bashir remembered that Alex had been pretty much balance-stable back there, the full weird limp fading into nothing but a slight tendency to put his weight on the right leg only. The opposite of stage fright. Stage confidence. He'd probably have to "babysit" Alex to keep him from doing anything else epically humiliating with Garak's body.

"AAYE!" Alex grinned and stumbled on mostly the rail handles back toward the holodeck entrance. 

Bashir grabbed his sleeve. "Where are you going?!"

"You haa goh' aa see this," he said. "Frikkin' Keedo."

Wishing he had a pair of earplugs to dull the over-loud, he followed Alex back into the extremely crowded holodeck. 

A tiny man wearing a white shirt and light beige pants climbed up on stage and Jadzia handed him the microphone. When he turned around, he had blended Cardassian features and Bajoran features. 

He started singing. 

"Shih thaa song!" Alex said. He guiltily twitched his hands in Bashir's face. "Aie know ye don' wann me up thar again, buh 'ee picked -thaa- song, an' ih has a dueh bih,"

(Translation: Shit, that song! I know you don't want me up there again, but he picked THAT song, and it has a duet bit.)

He stumble-darted off through the crowd, and Bashir, not sure what else to do about the whole situation, followed. The movements in his left hand correlated with the color light show and the appearance of background instrumentalists, and he climbed onto the stage juuuust in time to hold the bass duet part and grab an electical guitar out of air and holodeck programming. 

Keedo had a surprisingly flat face for a Cardassian and the Bajoran aspect just added to it. He shot Alex a look, then a double take, rolled his eyes and kept singing.

Alex had stage presence and was still sort of learning to drive someone else's voice box. This man had a beautiful voice and stage presence, although not nearly as trance inducing.

With the way they did this particular song, they were probably a cover band. With different bodies. Lots of times. Guitar tricks on top of vocal parts on top of light show. It was all well rehearsed. 

Kira sidled up beside Bashir. "I can't believe they're doing this!" she said. "Ziyal and Garak? Really? It's like they've done it before!"

"They probably have," Bashir said. That was/had been ZIYAL? 

Bashir wondered who exactly he thought was "cheating him", but he felt cheated. Keedo looked nothing like Ziyal other than the Bajoran/Cardassian bispecies effects. Things probably would have been much less crazy if Alex looked more like a Cardassian version of whatever his normal form was (Elroy mentioned blue? O.o?) and less like -exactly Garak- except for the movements.

The song ended and one of the purple humanoids, a man with long dark purple braids in his hair and a suit the actual Garak would probably really like started singing something that was both gorgeous and didn't translate. 

Keedo and Alex came over toward them. 

"Did noaa think aa thaa: this hann has the wrong kinna calluses. Owie. An' why'd ye pick THAA song?!" Alex said.

"The other song always ends the night and I didn't want it to end?" 

"Oh yeah..." 

"And you're GARAK? Don't you think this is getting out of hand?" Keedo said it like it had happened before. 

"eYeah," They'd reached Kira and Bashir and Alex half-sat against a trash can. "Aie don' haa anybody aie'm currenly crushin--er," he stopped and rubbed the chufa with the back of his hand. "Aie don' haa anybody thaa fihs Bashir, so-"

Keedo went up to him with a rather adorable pity-face. "You're the actual Bashir, aren't you?" He looked between the two. "That's got to be -really- awkward,"

"'Nabrin Tain was Elroy,"

Keedo looked like he was going to say something when the holodeck defaulted back to the normal room and the program shut off. 

And then it felt like a bomb shook DS9.


	4. Chapter 4

BASHIR:

Everyone's com badges were going off in a flurry of crowded beeping. Kira was wanted on Ops. Dax was wanted on Ops. Odo was wanted on Ops -and- the Promenade -and- Quark's bar. Bashir had so many medical emergencies he tried to teleport and couldn't because everyone else was using it. 

Elroy walked in the room. 

"Stop blowin' holes in ma station!" Alex yelled. 

Keedo stifled a giggle and the two of them exchanged glances, with Alex licking his tooth. (OOC: yes, he's quoting Jack Sparrow.) 

Elroy walked right up to him and quoted a different movie: "BY THE POWER OF CHRIST I COMPEL THEE!" 

A blast of light shot from Keedo to Elroy's hand and then at Alex. Keedo cried out and dropped to the ground, trembling and cradling a badly bleeding nose. 

Elroy sort of looked at his hand, then at Keedo, then at his hand again. "That wasn't supposed to happen--." he said. 

"I'm assuming there's a good reason the entire crew is milling about an empty holodeck?" That voice box. No accent. And he was standing straight again. 

"--That was," said Elroy.

Bashir grabbed his shoulders. "GARAK?!" 

Garak looked around at everything and then at him. "Judging by your surprise to see me and some other things that have occurred lately, I'm going to assume I wasn't me a second ago?"

Bashir's first instinct was to hug him, and then remembered that one, everyone that had seen the crazy Alex Karaoke song was still -right there- in the room, and two, he had a medical crisis to attend to. "I'll debrief you as soon as possible," he said. 

Garak nodded and Bashir kind of didn't want to let go of his shoulders, but in the short time their conversation had started up, Elroy had nudged Keedo with his foot, getting Kira to aim a phaser at him, and then everyone else followed her lead. Elroy had about 12 phasers on him and hadn't noticed at all. 

"You're a BackDoor to somewhere," he said, tapping Keedo's leg with his shoe and talking to himself. "-Their- Christ figure. Odd..."

"Yeah," Keedo gasped. "It sucks," Blood spattered on the ground and Bashir dropped down next to him, turning the tricorder on. 

According to the tricorder, well, the tricorder readings were so bizarre he put it down and did a visual scan. 

"Where does it hurt?" he asked. He'd ask for details later. His tricorder said either nothing should hurt or everything should. 

Keedo started to turn his wrists over and Elroy yelled again: "BY THE POWER OF CHRIST I COMPEL THEE!"

There was a blast of blazing white, right in Bashir's face and he had to shield himself from the searing brilliance. Keedo screamed in agony, going from kneeling in a little ball to lying on the ground, writhing and spattering the floor with a heavy bloody nose. Kira shot her phaser at Elroy. It went right through and hit someone else. Elroy spun around and started yelling at Kira. She kept firing. Someone else fired. 

Garak dropped down next to Bashir and whacked his com badge, "Three to beam to the med bay, stat." he said. 

And they were there.

Bashir grabbed pain meds and three or four other things before remembering the teleporter had been jammed with too many things to get them out that fast. He was so used to Alex being able to do basically whatever he wanted that he'd forgotten that Garak had half a million surprises up his sleeve, too. Maybe it was the "stat" thing? Nobody said "stat" when teleporting. It wasn't part of the protocol. 

And he didn't have time to attend to it. 

The station rocked like it had been hit again. More and more injured people poured in and he was very, very busy. 

By rules of wartime medical duress, he should have put Keedo on low priority. The tricorder said he was -dead-. But he was still very much alive, and there were a million questions to ask him anyway. Elroy's bizarre incantation worked on Alex. Why wasn't Ziyal back? 

As it was, he hit him with the hypospray and watched to make sure it "took", then attended to as many people as possible before coming back. 

\----

GARAK:

Garak mostly knew what was going on. He was Garak. He -always- knew what was going on. Mostly. 

That, and this time, there was a bit more to it. 

While Bashir had been having his adventures, Garak had been on a bizarre adventure of his own, and now he was both happy to be back, and a bit annoyed that he'd probably never find out what the last three chapters of that novel were. 

Oh well. There were certainly a LOT of things that needed attending to, even if that book was really, really interesting. 

Garak's adventure had been that he'd had gone from a standing position in the tailor shop to a sitting position in a completely different room. 

At first, he'd been utterly paranoid. He was always paranoid, but being yoinked out of where he was right while he was supposed to be on his way off the station and out to the Gamma Quadrant to rescue Tain from -Founders- was extremely terrifying. 

Bashir had been through a machine the Founders created that used the person's own memories to create anything the computer didn't know about. The doctor had been weirdly hush-hush uncomfortable telling him about the experience, so Garak hacked the reports and found out why: in the scenario, -Garak-, conjured by Julian's mind, cleverly saved them from JemHadar and then got shot for it because that's just something Julian thought would happen. (DS9 The Search, Part II) 

Touching. Adorable. Creepy. 

"That's some trick you have there--," he started to say, and got about as far as "that". It was like the mouth didn't want to cooperate with half the letters. 

"Aie. Yam. A. Recordin'," said a voice. "Er, aie'm -bein- recorded. Dammat. This is on issn' ih? Try thaa again," Static. 

(Translation--> I. Am. A. Recording. Er, I'm -being- recorded! dammit. This is on, isn't it? [Let's] try that again,")

Recordings weren't immediately dangerous. 

Garak tried to stand up and it was much more difficult than it should have been. What sort of drugs did they--whoever "I am a recording" was--have him on? It felt a little like trying to be bipedal water. 

"HAI." the recording said. "This feels aver so slighely Gladosish. Yeck. If yeh are here, ih's cause yeh goh through abouh' 16 programs worth aa defenses. Yeh were suppossa be in effin' stasis until aie goa back."

(Translation --> HI! This feels ever so slightly Glados-ish. (from Portal!) Yuck! If you are here, it's because you got through about 16 programs worth of defenses. You were supposed to be in fucking stasis until I got back!)

The Recording continued. "If yeh are Gallifreyan, this whole daam thing maie noaa work for yeh 'cause yeh eff up my code." the Recording said, then more to himself: "'ll in thaa case, ye maie noh hear the damn recordin' in the firss place. In any case, if yeh're Gallifreyan an' can hear me, thar's a lihhle book thingy over baie the table in case nothin' alse works. Thaas assumin' ih even renders." 

(Translation--> If you're Gallifreyan, this whole damn thing might not work for you because you fuck up my code. Well in that case, you might not hear the damn recording in the first place. In any case, if you're Gallifreyan and can hear me, there's a little book thingy over by the table in case nothing else works. That's assuming it even renders.)

There was indeed a little brown book on a glass table. Garak walked over and picked it up and the language script was a bunch of unreadable circles. 

The rest of the room was clean, glass, metal, generic, with no enclosing doors or other clear signals of confinement, and a archway going into an adjacent room. Judging by the "if you are Gallifreyan--" there was the possibility dropping him here specifically wasn't intentional. 

"If yeh are Cthulu-- yeh know whaa? Aiem' goinna pause this an' come up with a -diffren- place specifically in case Cthlulu aver happens." Static. "Okey, aiem' back."

(Translation--> If you're Cthulu-- you know what? I'm going to pause this and come up with a -different- place specifically in case Cthlulu ever happens. Okay, I'm back.) 

Cthulu. 

Oddly, Garak had actually -read- "Call of Cthulu" because the computer recommended it as a short, foundational piece of Earth literature that made other pieces of 20th century literature make sense. Weird little story.

What sort of situation was this where "if you're Cthulu..." was a likely enough scenario to warrant mention? 

"Dih aie miss anybodey? Probableh. EH. Okey, lehs geea starteh."

The room presented itself with a large blue button that should have looked ominous and didn't, which somehow made it slightly more ominous. 

"If ye happen aa' be warin' -me-," Recording seemed disturbed by that idea, "Geaa a really clear image aa whaa yeh look laike in yer head, an' the button will make yeh look laike you again. Genhai, aie couldn' geh ih aa work on yer species, sorrey." 

(Translation--> if you happen to be wearing ME mffrmffrsquick! get a really clear image of what you look like in your head and the button will make you look like you again. Genie, I couldn't get it to work on your species, sorry.") 

On the one hand, one does not go pushing buttons that claim to be able to mess with "your" body. 

On the other hand, maneuvering the body that he had proved to be considerably difficult. The recording had said "if you happen to be wearing -me-" as in this was that person's normal lookfeel? That was... squicky. Between the distracting white shirt, the incredibly hard to maneuver liquid feel, and the "might be wearing someone else's look", he thought of his favorite outfit and hit the button. 

It worked. 

He was himself, which was good, and the room seemed to gradually warm up to a comfortable Cardassian room temperature anyway.

"Sorrey aa puh yeh through this, yer prolly bored, buh 'eere, haa a game, an' maaaaaybeh ih'll ploh bunney yeh ouh aa here evenntually." 

There were several different games to choose from, and having nothing better to do after looking through the whole area several times, he picked one labeled "Story Quest".

It was a rather engaging, even -fun-, hunt through puzzles and other things looking for chapters of a well written novel, if it wasn't for the "still don't know where I am" and the "I have a long to-do list and this is in the way" aspects of it. 

The novel sort of touched on one possibility: Shurikai, two people from different worlds switching places with each other. 

He'd been right in the middle of solving an intriguing little language riddle when he was suddenly yanked back onto DS9, and given Bashir's reaction to him... whoever he'd been "wearing" had probably been wearing him. 

Slightly ew, slightly just "put it out of your mind and think about something else" weird.  
\--

ALEX:

And in The Warehouse, Alex popped up back in one of the hallways and landed on his butt. He pulled himself up and was happy to have his -own- body back. The off kilter walk was throwing the poor Cardassian's joints out of whack. 

Beep beep beep. 

The "Keedo-in-danger" alarm was still going. 

He half tumbled to one of the consoles and pulled up the relevant data: Keedo was still locked in that universe. Elroy'd tried to use the BackDoor to cast Keedo out of Ziyal and it hit a feedback loop. It couldn't cast him out and replace him with Ziyal halfway through because it needed him to be in the universe for the whole process to cast things out.

Elroy was there AND VC1Kaleb was there. Elroy could only code with BackDoors. Keedo was the only BackDoor-code-native in the universe. And Kaleb... well, "Kaleb kills Keedo" was notorious enough it was literally a philosophical expression on Mizu. 

Beep beep beep. 

"SHUH UP AIE KNOW OKEY??!" he yelled at it, spinning at a weird squattish angle that would have looked really, really bizarre on a Cardassian and was par normal for him. 

Frankly, "Kaleb kills Keedo" might be one of the better scenarios. Nearly every single Shurikai someone dying just threw them back into their own universe. RJ'd died in his late 70s of geriatric stomach cancer how many times now? 

"Bang-bang you're dead welcome home have a cookie" wasn't terrible in and of itself, and Kaleb was vengeful, not sadistic. 

The problem was Elroy using Keedo for his BackDoor access, which was torturous...and Keedo was developing case of nasty PTSD. 

In the time Alex knew him, Keedo'd started out as a happy, chipper, literally-addicted-to-being-with-people type of person, to always on his guard, easily startled, easily knocked into abject terror... and just oblivious enough to not realize he -had- PTSD. 

From Keedo's perspective "You hang out with an generally omnicient God" experiences conflicted with "Your native universe is literally out to kill you" and meant Keedo subconsciously blamed a lot of things -on- Alex whether Alex was actually involved or not. 

Like when the Sauseristan system crashed, which set pretty much every freaking alarm in the entire Warehouse off and shorted some circuits, wearing out the probability matricies in Keedo's universe. Things that should have been caught by them weren't, and it took a manual phone call from Zamiel for Alex to even find out. 

Or the time Keedo got stuffed into a fractalized, Gallifreyan-native universe. "EH DO YEH KNOW HOW HARR IH IS AA HACK THIS SHIH? I yam lihherally breakin' thar univarse bein' here" didn't mean much when Keedo's BackDoor aspect had been hijacked and used as a battery... for months. 

Alex's systems -did- catch things. They caught a lot of things. Just not -everything-. 

Throw in the part where Keedo's housemaid went all "Munchausen By Proxy" on him, and yeah, Keedo had PTSD. 

The worst bit was "Keedo is oblivious" was also a well known Mizu phrase. He ran on habits and autopilot as opposed to thinking things through--and all those habits were built before the PTSD started to set in. 

Beep beep beep. 

Too many expletives later, Alex found the right Universe address. The clearest, fastest, least-likely-to-muck-things-up way into the universe was the multidimensional Sauseristan access portal set in a deep, abandoned mine on Cardassia's Northern Continent. A long time ago, he'd crafted people. A nation called Sauseristan discovered the megaverse, and he'd been dealing with shurikai jumps ever since. Sauseristans were partial to Cardassians and looked like nice, normal "ally" species in oh-too-many universes. 

When he stumbled through their portal for this one, the Sauseristans in the room all dropped what they were doing and stared at him, terrified, and the three Cardassians in the room aimed phasers. 

"WE DID NOTHING DANGEROUS NOPE WE DIDN'T NOPE WE ARE NOT GOING TO BLOW ANYTHING UP NOT RIGHT NOW OKAY WHY ARE YOU HERE ARE WE IN TROUBLE WHAT DID WE DO WRONG THIS TIME?" click-spoke all the Sauseristans in the room. 

Alex popped his neck and shifted into his Cardassian form. 

"Eh, aie juss nee' a shuttle, -chill-," he said. "Ih's an emergency an' any other way in'd piss off the Q people."

"WE DON'T LIKE Q WE ANNOYED A Q ALREADY ONCE."

He checked this laboratory's log record in the Warehouse. Yup. They'd pissed off Q once with trying to um, run tests on the Enterprise. Benign tests (mostly!) but tests nonetheless. 

(OOC: not necessarily, but maybe in this universe, "TNG: Allegiance" went eeeever so slightly differently and it was Sauseristans mucking things up instead of these guys: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Unnamed_humanoids_(24th_century)#Abducting_aliens heehee!) 

If simple Sauseristan poking pissed off Q, this was a universe with a meddling, invasive Q. 

Beep beep beep. 

"Mission: Prevent Potential PTSD" just got a lot more frustrating. 

He stumbled over to the elevator lift, went up to the surface, borrowed a runabout and aimed for Terok Nor, er DS9. "Eff thaa. Eff all the things. EFF EVERYTHIN'." he said. 

Beep beep beep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Rating change for just this chapter!!***
> 
> This chapter is pretty much just FailNovel Problems with just my original novel characters and it's totally R rated. 
> 
> If you want, you can skip to the next chapter and I tried to make a quick PG-rated "fill you in" summary on it. Lots of violence, rape/noncon, bad things!

KALEB

Kaleb wasn't sure what to do this time around. Kill Keedo? Not kill Keedo? 

Maybe he could just -control- him, keep him here, keep him bound, keep him locked to him. 

He beamed him onto the Okomfo and Keedo froze, staring at him wide eyed in horror. All that power in his veins and the man was still afraid of him. 

Kaleb slammed the vampire into the wall, laughing at the choked cry and the man's small size in comparison to his. The only reason Kaleb could think of for Keedo to have tried drugging him like this was to create a big dumb nobody brute squad member. All he'd got back was "big". 

"We bleed black here," he said. The half-Cardassian neck buried the jugular vein too far down to cut, too far down to find.

He slashed the man's shoulder instead and drained him as far as he could, then locked himself into the brig where it wouldn't let him out for 24 hours. 

Kaleb leaned up against the wall, torn between the drive to worship and care for Keedo like he was the man's minion and hating every minute of it--and the inward focus. 

Hi liver! You need assistance? Here, let me channel that right into you. There. Better now? Good! Hey muscles! Enjoy a batch of -this-. There's some for you and some for you and some for you and some for you and some for you... Ooh. Hey nervous system! Oh you poor alcohol-shredded thing you. Here. Lemme pull power from our enemy and you just use that to patch up alllll the damage. There. *pat pat pat* You just keep enjoying yourself. Ooh! Thank you for the sensory overload pleasure return. His circulatory system needed love and it got it. The joints in his feet needed love and they got it. He met organs he had no idea what they were and named one "potato" for now. On and on and on. 

And then he ran out of things to heal and there was nothing to distract from the hellish craving, wanting, needing and requiring and hating every second of it. 

It was like drugs. Like Odysseus and the sirens. Like... like being trapped in the car and needing to pee really bad and your parents don't believe you all the way from Santa Clara to San Francisco and it's a traffic jam that one time. Except all the time. 

It got to be too much. 

He broke through the metal side of the wall, away from the energy blockade, crushing through it via a combination of vampire-charged strength and his own might, and pinned the other man to the ground. The need was starting to make him crazy.

What if he...? 

It occurred to him to try something. Something that might shunt the desire to worship, and shunt the desire to kill, and shunt the need for power all to somewhere else. 

He slammed the man face-down on the floor and raped him, burned some healing points, and raped him again, over and over and over, holding him down and crushing the bones in the other man's wrist. Raped to keep from killing him. Raped to keep from worshiping him. Raped to keep from going crazy.

It helped but it didn't. 

The sexual release did nothing to ease the mindwarping "pull" he felt, but it did give it somewhere to go. He was still so locked into its effect he could only barely see. 

There was a specific angle that when he leaned down on the man's back, crushing his arms down, that the vampire went utterly mad with agony, screaming and shrieking in pain, pleading for release, begging for him to get off--and for the first time, Kaleb was wreaking as bad of havoc on the vampire as the vampire had on him. 

He picked the vampire up by his throat and held him against the wall, strangling him as tightly as he dared. 

"Do I want you dead?" he said. Keedo stared wildly at him, horrified, trembling in shock, shaking with how bad it hurt, his broken arms and aching, bruised and torn body dangling under Kaleb's grip. 

"I want you, but death was so -permanent-. Last time, last universe, I killed you, and then you -weren't there-. Nothing to fight against, nothing to push against, nothing mattered because you weren't there to be alive to fight against."

He slammed his fist into the man's stomach and black wutao blood splattered across his face. He could taste the toxins in it, its insane, universe-shifted inhumanness. "But I killed you, and I didn't -want- to, but I didn't -know- that at the time. 

He slammed his fist into the man's stomach again and Keedo's eyes rolled back in his head for a moment. 

Kaleb hurled the fragile body across the room and Keedo landed on his broken wrist, wrenching on it. He screamed in pain, curling up in a tiny ball at first and then trying to crawl away from him. Kaleb pinned him to the ground and sat sidelong across the man's pelvis, pinning him to the ground. 

"Get off!" Keedo screamed, burning blood points he probably couldn't actually spare to keep Kaleb from collapsing his entire brittle pelvic structure. "Thirsty... thirsty!" he gasped, flickering between insane wild vampiric mode and sanity. 

Kaleb slammed his fist into the man's throat and felt things crush under his fist. 

"Do I need you there or do I need you gone? What would I be capable of with you here? You're not a protagonist. You're no one. You're nothing. You're some random bastard child of no one important here,"

He bound the vampire's wrists to a wall and watched him kneel there, shaking with pain, each breath coming ragged through badly bruised throat, flitting between the monster form of the last bit of exanguinated vampire hell and his homely little "normal" form, made slightly less homely by the universe shift.

He'd said thirsty.

They were both thirsty. 

He needed a victim for his Vampire. He beamed a random traveler out of the back of a nothing useful place and cut their wrist, dropping it in front of Keedo's mouth. Keedo resisted, resisted, resisted, then snapped into a bloodfrenzy mode of insanity, draining them to death. 

Then Kaleb drained him again, pulling the Vampire all the way down into bloodthirst agony, fighting through the craving, the desire. 

And the worst part was that the entire time, he was fighting the desire to merely cradle him against his chest and worship him as if he were God. He allowed himself whatever he could do besides that. 

Kaleb ran his hands across the man's chest and crushed his fist into his stomach, watching him scream in pain and torment, traumatized and horribly wounded. 

"What -are- you to me?" Kaleb wondered. 

The will to power?

Maybe. He dragged his fingernails down across the man's face, ripping through the skin. "Maybe what I need is not -freedom-, but freedom and -power- and with you, the power is here, the isades is there, the ability to be, the ability to have something to feel," He wasn't making any sense even to himself. 

He stood up and kicked the vampire over, then stood on his back and listened to the wailing pleading and the frantic screams. "You plead for mercy," Kaleb yelled. "What do you know of mercy?" 

The vampire was beamed away out from under him and Kaleb was alright with that. 

He could have killed him, could have torn the man's throbbing heart out at any time. Now he had enough of the man's blood he could replicate it whenever he needed it. 

He was free, yet also had what he needed. It was a better freedom, a better, a greater world, a will to power, his power, whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.  
\----  
KEEDO:

The unexpected teleport sent him to a roundabout with Kaleb--wutao!--towering over him. 

The worst part was feeling like he deserved every second of it.

Everyone fought for years to try to keep him from being killed like this, and now it was happening. 

Kaleb was right here, in a Shurikai, bound by two whole universes worth of plots. 

The man drained him to the point where he was insanely thirsty and half mad with terror, then tried to confine himself behind an energy wall just to prevent himself from getting to him. 

It didn't work long. He smashed the panel -next- to the energy wall and came out, as insane with his need to kill as Keedo was afraid of dying. He pinned him to the ground and beat him, breaking bones, ribs, bruising his internal organs bad enough Keedo was half blind from the massive spikes of pain.

At one point Kaleb held him pinned one handed against the wall, cutting off all air and Keedo's main thought was "well, this is it then?" before being flung across the room to land on broken wrists. 

And being raped? 

He hadn't expected that, hadn't planned for it. He'd planned for -years- that somehow, in some way, Kaleb was going to get him killed. 

He hadn't expected to be raped. Let alone multiple times. He could barely breathe for the torment of it, and the worst part was knowing just how bad it would be if he lived through it. Nobody would ever -listen- and he'd be traumatized forever. 

Then he'd been teleported away, and now he was somewhere, one part of his mind remembering terrible stories of a million raped men in prisons and war countries, and knowing just how bad it would be. No one would ever really believe him, really, and that was just how it was. 

The other part of his mind was screaming in terror and pleading for the trauma to stop. 

Then there had been the thing with Raven's world. There had been the thing with the battery in the fractal universe. The thing about those was it had never been so -personal-.  
\----  
BASHIR: 

Keedo'd gone missing and when Odo finally tracked him down, it was a massive medical emergency. Keedo was teleported back to DS9, directly into the med bay. 

Bashir tried to swallow the utter frustration he had with Keedo's species. There was no way his tricorder could be that wrong. Everyone expected him to work miracles and Bashir really and truly had no idea what was going on here. 

According to everything his computers could give him--the guy was DEAD. 

Bashir couldn't use any of his computers to read off anything about him. The giant mess of coding and whatever was up with Elroy and whatever was up with him now, he couldn't just read off the tricorder. The man's body broke -all- the rules. 

And to make matters even more fun, he was half Bajoran and half Cardassian "this time around" making Bashir feel like he'd been flung into something that would make him utterly crazy to try to figure out. He was running on mostly visual diagnosis. 

Talk about "frontier medicine".

A cursory view from the outside, based on nothing but looking at him with Bashir's bare eyes and comparing it to what he'd seen between last time and now: both forearms broken, multiple layers of bruising and hemorrhaging across his face and throat and ribs and chest, and a tiny press on some of them showed broken ribs. He was badly hypovolemic and seemed utterly terrified of everything.

The more Bashir went to repair things, the more things he found to repair, and figuring out which things were recent and which things were ancient was...difficult. 

Setting the bones, getting the computer to replicate his blood to offset the hypovolema was first. He was in deep, traumatized agony and nothing they tried seemed to work on whatever he was. 

A pattern sort of seemed to emerge, with many "yes but what about--?" in it: the circulatory system was fully working, so any damage was recent and needed immediate repair. The nervous system was fully working, so everything ached to the point of madness. 

Everything else was on a sliding scale of "sorta kinda". 

The long bones were dry and produced no blood at all--which made the working circulatory system rather strange. Long cords in the muscles looked like gray cooked meat next to functioning, fully working cords of muscle that looked just fine. On any close inspection at all, Bashir could see the hundreds of crisscrossed scars on his hands, and a massive, very old, faded burn scar on his back. The digestive tract was a mess, with pieces working just fine and other parts corpselike, black and mummified. 

The worst was the kidneys. 

Just working enough to set off flares through his working nervous system, but half dead and almost rotted. And those were mostly very old injuries, but evidence of very recent abraded trauma. 

The recent ones were many, many, many blunt bruises and a great deal of sexual assault, like he'd been raped by something large several times in the last few hours. There were hundreds of microfractures in the man's pelvis, and the contusions from the functioning circulatory system all said they were all very, very recent. 

It was bad enough Bashir wondered how someone as deific as Alex was supposed to be could let their friend get into such horrible condition. Not necessarily the recent things, but the older things. 

Then he remembered back with Elroy in the prison talking about BackDoors, with Garak being "not BackDoor compatible" and Bashir being more so--and how intensely Alex had stared down Elroy over it. 

"Don't fucking do it," he'd said, with enough intensity to freeze the room and get Elroy to back down about it. 

This seemed to be why. Was this what it meant to be BackDoor compatible?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um... ahem. THIS THING WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY. ALEX LEAVES FOR 2 HOURS AND ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. Guyyyyys srsly?? (Reason #47578 why VC is FailNovel)
> 
> And as for "HOW THE FUCK DOES KALEB GET AWAY WITH THIS??", he feels extremely violated by Keedo as well from the way the bloodmagic works (yay FailNovel... mffrmffr). And, going waaaay back to the original VC1, 2007 era, there was a discussion with my friend about the WhiteWolf vampire system and one of the traits is "gets away with vampire-related crimes". Like he can't shoplift or walk into a bank and steal money and have it benefit, but if the crime is directly related to his vampirism needs, it just kinda falls by the wayside. 
> 
> I don't think Kaleb knows he has that trait, but it meshes with a couple other short stories I've got with him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to nice, safe, general-audience rating except there's lots of swearing. :)

GARAK:

The first step was to get informed--now. Knowing so little of what was going on was nerve-wracking.

He went to where it was safe to do so and logged onto the hacking OS. 

He'd been half hour away from heading out to rescue Enabran Tain when he'd switched out with "I Yam A Recording"--for whom such things were normal enough they'd built an entire system to keep -him- out of -their- personal life. 

That was decidedly unfair. 

He pulled up the security camera for where he last remembered being and fast forwarded until the him on screen completely switched out how they moved. 

It was the worst case of uncanny valley ever.

Even though he didn't constantly watch videos of himself, making it was more remote, more distant, like watching a fellow Cardassian than watching himself, it was still shocking. 

The horrific posture and the way they cracked the spine over and over explained why he was now fighting a subconscious battle between wanting a chiropractor and having no one in the know universe he'd trust with that. Too embarrassing to bring up to Bashir, too awkward to bring up with anyone else.

The person's tumble-stumble across the room was sheer nightmare fuel, especially with them wearing one of his favorite outfits. 

"Recording" leaned backward at a nasty angle, all the weight pushed down through the wrong muscles on the right leg and said something into the mirror, but this particular camera intentionally didn't have sound to block security. Now he regretted it.

And then Bashir walked in. 

Garak didn't realize he'd slammed his eyes shut in embarrassment for a second, and had to pry them back open to watch. 

It could have been worse. 

A LOT worse. He was expecting hellishly worse. 

He was expecting Bashir to freak out and go into Medic Mode and tear down the multiple years of walls of defenses and break their entire relationship in a split second, never to be rebuilt. 

What he got made him unsure whether he was trading in-the-moment relief for something worse down the line. "Recording" knew they moved wrong and were deliberately trying to hide it--but why? 

And it seemed to be -working-. Bashir was acting like nothing was amiss. 

But "I Yam A Recordin'" couldn't talk correctly, either. He'd tried to talk and couldn't really get the other man's mouth to cooperate. He wished there was -sound- on this! It seemed like a good idea so long ago to break it so no one couldn't track sound in the shop in case of Obsidian Order things years ago, and now when he needed it, it wasn't there. 

How was Bashir not noticing this?! Every time Bashir looked away, the man would shift and make odd movements.

The doctor turned around right as Recording was sliding their tongue across their teeth in the weirdest gesture possible, and it was disjunct and out of character enough that Bashir stopped talking and they stared at each other for a few moments. 

Then the doctor's com badge went off and he left the room, hopefully forgetting all about that anything was amiss.

That was a relief. 

Still bad, but could have been much, much, MUCH worse. 

And then on screen, Recording -fell over-. Just let go of the table and sat splatted on the ground.

"Are you -trying- to ruin my favorite outfit?" Garak said to the screen. "WHY would you do such a thing!?"

And then Morn walked in. 

Garak had the ego-scarring experience of watching the Lurian waddle over, pull "him" up off the ground and try brushing him off, then watch Recording explain something there wasn't sound to hear, and just stumble all around the shop. It was bad enough it was disheveling his hair. 

And Morn didn't care. That was even more resentment-inducing. What had Recording told the Lurian that they thought this was anything even remotely close to normal!?

With Morn gone, Recording popped his neck again and Garak watching flinched. Ouch...? 

They went over to the wall and proceeded to expertly hack the teleport grid. 

That sent them to a Bajoran runabout.

If in the time that Garak had been gone in Recording's giant game setup, Recording had had the common sense to leave--why was it that when he'd returned, he'd been in the holodeck. This still didn't tell him anything other than why every joint felt like it had been ground through hell and back. 

But runabout cameras had sound, necessary in case of crashes and other details. 

He switched the camera over to the runabout.

Bashir!

The doctor spun around on the seat, aiming a phaser. "Going somewhere?"

Recording dropped all pretenses, leaning up against the door frame and not trying at all to hide that he moved like a giant muppet with joint problems. "You were spossa be on the othar ship!" he yelled. 

Yep, that was Recording alright. The same exact mispronunciations, and for the very first time in his life, Garak was glad that hearing one's own voice through a recording never actually sounded like your own voice because of the double layer of sound coming in. 

Other ship? What other ship? 

Garak had set it up to take one of the Federation ones out to the Gamma quadrant, but how did Recording know that? Was that even what he was referring to?

The next few moments of conversation seemed to go one way--"oh good, the doctor knows that's NOT ME and everything that Recording does will not be held against me later"--and then suddenly switched out completely.

"No Changelin' has evar harmed anothar," 

-Bashir- was a changeling. 

BASHIR WAS A CHANGELING! 

That was shocking enough to pause the playback and just stare blankly at nothing. 

That explained everything.

Everything Garak could think of that he liked about Bashir kept pointing right to "you've always been a Founder and there is no real actual Bashir at all..." 

The doctor was boundlessly smarter than every other human Garak had ever talked to. His precision. His cleverness. The observation yet naiveté. The feeling sometimes that the two of them shared a sense of "otherness" and even subtle superiority. 

The whole event with the implant came flooding back. Had the person who'd been there with him through all that, behind the eerie normal eyes, had that been nothing but a Changeling there?

When Garak had been ready to blow up the entire Founder's planet and Worf had reminded him that Bashir would die as well, had he technically been TRYING to kill him? Needing to? 

HOW MUCH OF ALL OF THIS WAS A LIE? 

Had he, the greatest liar in the Alpha Quadrant been being lied to --this entire time--??

His beloved doctor... nothing but a fabricated myth?

If that was the case, nothing mattered at all.

He mindlessly thumbed through the basic news of Cardassia, numb and looking for a tiny flick of information to be worth getting out of the chair and breathing again. 

Dukat was gone, replaced by a complete unknown, Gul Kaleb. That was new. In the tiny time Garak had been switched out with Recording Cardassia was now all weird and different as well.

That was technically very important and it just made the "nothing matters" worse. 

Random article about nothing. Random article about nothing. Random article about nothing. Random article about family. 

Enabran Tain. 

Enabran Tain mattered.

Recording had zipped off to the Gamma Quadrant with the damn Changeling. Had that been about Tain? 

He searched loosely through the computer for it and got nothing relevant back. Too much was different and it would require a lot of new updates to figure out. 

Worse, all he really wanted to do was... nothing. 

He'd gone and let himself be lied to for 5 years. Fallen in love with a complete and total nothing. What did Cardassia want to do with somebody that couldn't even figure all that out?! 

Get up off the chair? Should, don't care. Turn off the hacking OS so Odo doesn't find it? Should. Don't care. Maybe in prison somebody'd make him eat. 

That did seem a bit extreme.

He still existed.

-He- still mattered. 

Prison was still a bad idea. 

He may not be able to make it out of the room without a good reason, but he could make himself log off the OS. 

He slogged through massive effort to hit the log off button and there an incoming signal bleep interrupted him. The OS was native Cardassian code, so it picked up the old standard Cardassian hailing frequency before the Federation/Bajoran one. 

"Eh, this is Alex, can aie dock okey? Ih's a beea an emergency."

That was Recording. Nobody else talked like that. Recording had a name now. 

His hand habit-instinctively intercepted it and had them on screen before remembering "oh yeah, Bashir's a lie, you're incompetent and you've been pining for a CHANGELING for for five years and living with this filthy Federation and thinking he was one of them", leaving him staring at the viewscreen at someone who was just as uncanny looking as they had been uncanny moving--and now Garak was too depressed to come up with anything to -say-. 

He still didn't know what Alex was. The guy could apparently switch out with Cthulu, make -his very own fingers- go into bright blue Changeling goop, and now he was looking at a decently normal wutao face--with decidedly not-normal bright blue hair, tied back and up, and long enough to fall out of the bottom of the viewscreen.

"OH HAIE!" Alex said, sliding partially out of the chair he was sitting in and twitching far, far worse than they ever had on camera as him. "Sorreh abouh all the things... whaie are you on this link annieway?" 

Bashir was a lie. 

I should say something. 

Bashir is a lie. 

It doesn't matter what gets said or what happens... well there is still -me-. I care about -me-. What does -me- want? 

Me wants Bashir to be real and that's not an option right now.

I suppose "me" needs to survive another day. Yes, that's what "me" wants. 

That kicked enough of his brain into gear to pull a random excuse off the shelf of random excuses and fling it at the new person. "Didn't mean to intercept. You -are- on a Cardassian frequency and I was trying to download the latest catalog for Lakarian City fashions and you just happened to be on it."

Alex went through a long series of unrestrained weird movements, including a tongue lick across his teeth. "Yeh really do thaa, don't yeh," he said. He snapped his fingers, accompanied by an odd gesture, and a download of the latest catalog for Lakarian City fashions appeared on the computer screen.

Disturbing. 

"Do what?" Garak asked.

"The..." Alex gave him a weird half smile, then started the sentence over. "Yar the epih famous tailer an' yeh talk laike yarr the epih famous tailer. Ih's awesome!"

Famous? Famous where for what?! Did that matter? That seemed like in any other mood, that would matter a lot. He wasn't supposed to be famous. 

"Sorry 'bouh the holodeck an' aie may needa wipe Qark's miane abouh ih so yeh can acshullay go aa the bar again,"

(Translation--> Sorry about the holodeck and I may need to wipe Quark's mind about it so you can actually go to the bar again.)

"What did you DO?"

"Goh carried away," he licked his teeth in the weirdest move ever. 

His dashboard beeped. "Thaa'd be Kira, aime gonna go dock," 

Garak nodded and the communication changed. 

He looked recent events in the holodeck.

It started with just Jadzia and Alex, and this one had sound.

"So yeh laike aa sing, raieh?" 

"Mmhmm." 

"Good 'cause aie'm tohally in the mood aa sing an' aie laike karaoke, you sing a thing, aie sing a thing, everybody sings a thing,"

Luckily Jadzia seemed to be reacting like she'd been informed this wasn't him. The room shifted around her to something very Trill Homeworld and she sang something and Garak fast-forwarded through it. 

Alex could program the holodeck in real time, apparently. With a handwave, the room turned into something that looked like it could be an old -Cardassian- nightery that wasn't part of the current holodeck scenarios. 

The song started, made of bizarre, almost tribal drum thumping, with brash electrical synth over it. Alex was going to try to make this voicebox sing to that? Garak flinched. He was 5 the last time he tried to sing. 

The flinch was mostly unwarranted. 

Yes, Alex could sing. 

That left Garak with another problem entirely. Three songs in, Jadzia brought in Quark, and then QUARK BROADCASTED IT ACROSS THE ENTIRE ALPHA QUADRANT. 

The bit from Lovecraft about "Old Gods ruining lives because they just don't get it" and "Alex was potentially switchable with Cthulu" was suddenly very believable. "Sorreh for all the things" didn't even begin to cut it. 

And it was -obviously- all the attention on Alex. Who looked like Garak. 

Cthulu The Singing CrowdPleaser, crouching on the edge of the stage and making absolutely certain Odo heard him. There were now intesely lit, high contrast images of -him-, in his third favorite outfit, WITH A GIANT FEDERATION SYMBOL BEHIND HIM, being blasted across the entire universe. 

And the worst part was that it sort of vaguely filled the back of his very depressed mind with something to do. This calamity was a very good reason to go disguise himself as somebody else and start an entire new life without the Nonexistent Isn't Real Founders Not Bashir. It wasn't a pleasant reason, but it was a totally horrific, bizarrely enforced one.

Alex started a song with the lights going black and a single spotlight right on his head. 

That was more egotistical than DUKAT in some ways. 

Flouncing around, mic in hand, throwing out their joints and shaking the hair out of place.

"YOU'RE GOING TO TRIP US OFF THE STAGE!" Garak half yelled to the screen when Alex--with his zero balance and inbent leg--crouched down on the very edge of the platform, throwing song words at someone specific in the audience, just like he had on every song earlier. 

And then Alex moved the holodeck to yank someone up with him and Garak slammed the pause button down and logged off the OS, shaking and wishing the implant had never broken. He'd never needed it so badly. 

The split second he'd seen the image, with the lighting and the high contrast and the clarity, it was the most "yes that's how life should be" moment to ever exist. 

Without the culture context of the bizarre synth electric tribal music, it was an image of himself being completely in his element, while tugging and pulling the beautifully naive doctor down into their own special world, with the whole rest of everyone buzzing and spinning and out of focus around them, just the two of them and Bashir's quizzical face enthralled by his temptations--

\--and absolutely none of it was real. 

It wasn't him, it was some kind of Old God enigma and Bashir, his only stable anchor for five years was a construct by the people trying to take over the Alpha Quadrant. 

He -really- wished Worf hadn't gotten in the way when he'd tried to blow their atrocious planet up. Worf's challenge: "What about Bashir?!" and his response "They'll die, and when the Jem Hadar find out what's happening, so likely will we" sounded so appealing right now. 

Death was bad. Death and getting rid of the entire problem, all the problems at once wasn't nearly as bad. 

Nothing mattered and he was now too famous to leave the room without random passersby expecting him to do things he had no idea how to go about doing. 

With training, maybe. Apparently, this voicebox could actually sing, but still.

Still? 

There was no "still". 

DS9 didn't matter; Bashir wasn't real and he'd been too oblivious and off his guard to realize that. Cardassia barely mattered; in the two days he'd been gone the whole political party had switched out and he was too out of the loop to see it coming. Enabran Tain mattered, barely, but who knew what had happened in the Gamma Quadrant anyway. 

Having the concept of Cthulu attached to Alex was incredibly comforting at the moment. 

He curled up on the bed, staring off into space. 

Should... don't wanna... talk to Alex and ask him what he expected out of doing that life-altering stage performance. 

Should... don't wanna... pack and escape. What was the point? Where was there to go anyway? 

Should... don't wanna... keep faking being a tailor. Why? Not sure, it just seemed like something to put on the list. 

Pointless. Everything so pointless. 

Somebody in the shop. GO AWAY. Even mentioning it required too much effort. They knocked, knocked again.

"You're the only one of us on the station, Dukat didn't like you, I'd like to find out -why-," they said.

He rolled over on the bed and looked through the camera.

It was a very tall, unfamiliar Cardassian in a Gul uniform, but with slightly too long of hair, tied back in a short ponytail. 

That was Gul Kaleb. 

Garak laid back down on the bed and ignored him. 

That did give him something to puzzle over though. Who was this person? 

Compared to what he'd thought he had a few days ago, this was a worthless, weightless nothing anchor that would last only as long as his first conversation with them, but it was better than just laying here. 

And the whole Alpha Quadrant though he could sing. 

He got up and logged back onto the hacking OS.

Kaleb broke tables.

Kaleb knew history, or at least liked it enough to reference it constantly, throwing in quotes from Trill history, quotes from Earth history, quotes from Klingon history. 

And thought they were all -literature- to him. 

Just like Garak had been switched out with Alex, Kaleb was switched out with someone. 

But who did he switch into?

Ten seconds of hacking told him Kaleb was switched out with Damar and had um, -eaten- Dukat. EW?! 

But now he had a "Plan". 

It wasn't a pleasant plan. 

His own survival was relevant.  
What he really wanted after than was for Bashir to be real. That wasn't possible.  
Next down the list was Enabran Tain. That was a giant mess.  
Next after that was Cardassia. 

The plan was to -carefully-, because cannibalism was a 2-edged blackmail vs. don't-get-eaten sword, use Kaleb to hide from unwarranted stage-fame and go fund Enabran Tain.

All his remaining reasons meshed now.

Kaleb made things even easier by writing his plans down. All Garak'd have to do is point a camera at him at all times and he'd not only have everything the man did, but everything the man -thought-. 

More spying netted him pertinent information: Kaleb and Alex didn't know each other, Alex could just sense Changelings by default, and Kaleb and Keedo were... also terrifying. 

Kaleb had switched in only days ago and already had enough blackmail material to last until he wasn't needed anymore.

"You're really going to have to get yourself under control," Garak thought after watching -that- security camera vid. "And I'm going to have to be very, very armed at all times." 

More pertinent research later that mostly consisted of slogging through densely written, poorly worded common sense from a German guy Kaleb seemed to be fond of, he set a bag of relevant objects to be instant teleportable and tagged with a computer system crash and physical burn and found the least populated way to Gul Kaleb's quarters. 

He really wished Bashir was real and none of this was necessary, but oh well, all hail Cardassia.  
\----  
TinyCuteBreak because angst:  
ZIYAL:

POP

"Oh dear where am I?" Ziyal looked down at her hands and eeped. "WHAT AM I?!" 

Her hands were paper-white. "I'M A GHOST?!" 

She looked around. Nobody was there and the building was huge. Judging from what was out the windows--lots and lots of green, and blue sky behind it--this was on land. 

After glancing some more--this would be highly humiliating if it didn't work--she tried jumping to see if, as a ghost, she could fly. Nope. Not a ghost.

There was a very soft -pad pad thump- sound behind her. 

And a -pad pad thump- again.

She turned around and saw something black and many limbed, which was creepy, but fuzzy, tiny, with big front paws (two sets!) and long little back paws, and a taur body with two sets of handed limbs and wings on the taur back. AND a tail. 

It was trying to jump. She tilted her head. It tilted its head and looked at her with big soulful eyes. A very clear image of herself jumping appeared in her head and the nonverbal feeling that if she was jumping, there must be a good reason, so it was jumping too. 

She looked... not quite full Bajoran? And her hair was -white-. THAT was weird. There was a little mirror over the fireplace. She went over to it and that was sorta kinda not really sorta her face sort of? 

She looked a lot like Keiko OBrien.

Human. Human female, complete with the totally flat nosebridge.

Did that mark human gender? Normally, Ziyal had a Bajoran nosebridge with nice normal ridges. 

She really wished someone would have told her more about this. Gender was important to people and she was very likely to get it wrong. 

Did "flat nosebridge" mean "female" on a human? Miles OBrien had a nosebridge. He was male. Bashir had a nose bridge. He was male. Keiko OBrien had a really flat nosebridge and was female. Molly OBrien had a really flat nosebridge and was female. Sisko was the only thing throwing it off, and he was a completely different color. Different breed? Who knew? 

She turned to the little creature. "Don't take this the wrong way," she said. "Are you... sentient?"

It waddled up to her and hugged her shin, pinging her solved arithmetic problems as it went. That... didn't really answer the question, but it was cute, anyway. And it was -fuzzy-. It wanted to be picked up, so she picked it up. 

It very softly pawed her face and pinged her a completely different face and the feeling of being hugged by something much much larger than her. 

She skitched its ear. "Did you just telepathically hand me what it's like to be hugged for you to be hugged by your owner??!" 

It nodded a lot and smiled, pinging a lot more information about them. 

She couldn't tell gender on them. If nosebridge = human gender, this was definitely a girl, and from the perspective of a very small furry animal, she couldn't get any other clues on the shape. 

The face was more similar to Keiko OBrien's than any other human she'd seen, but not by much. The very flat nosebridge. The way the hair fell. The colors all matched what she was currently "living in", and that was unnerving. 

"I think I'm -in- your owner!" she said. 

The creature's lower lip quivered and she could feel its wordless sadness being pinged back at her. It was bad enough she had to swallow a sympathy cry. 

She hugged it and got the feedback loop of feeling herself being hugged by them, so it sort of felt like she was hugging herself. THAT was nice. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, it was an accident..." she said. "Or something. I don't know I didn't mean to." It pinged a sense that it thought she was nice.

Footsteps, echoing LOUD in the big open, very high ceiling room. 

"Sir, you left your breakfast out today and you need to-- oh, hello ma'am, I take it you're here on Shurikai?" 

The person speaking--still can't tell gender! Flat nose bridge = very large woman?!--was HUGE. But that was probably a male chest assuming humans even worked that way? She'd never bothered to pay that much attention. The concept she'd need it never crossed her mind, and observing closely felt impolite. 

They hid whatever they had in their hand behind their back and gave her a cute "oh dear" face. Were they closing their eyes? Other than the utterly massive size, they weren't threatening at all. 

"Hello. I don't know why I'm here and I'm sorry and I didn't mean to and I don't know what's going on and... what is this adorable creature called anyway?" Ziyal said. 

"That's Eve. She's a Zarthan, ma'am," He held one hand up. "Is it polite in your culture to introduce oneself first or second?"

"First?" Odd question. 

They nodded. "In that case, I am Bang, and you've Shurikai's into being Keedo."

"I'm Ziyal," said Ziyal. 

Their head tilted and they opened their eyes for a split second. "Ah! That does coincide with the shape of your updo. If you'll excuse me ma'am, I need to put my owner's lunch away, I will be back shortly. Is there anything you would like from the kitchen?"

"OWNER?!" she squeaked without meaning to.

"I am an android, ma'am." They looked embarrassed. "This particular rendition is Keedo's butler. It is in my agreement that I could leave at any moment, but I do very much like working here. I highly enjoy cleaning up after his parties and--" they blinked. Yep, they'd been standing there with their eyes closed. "--I'm making this worse, aren't I?"

Ziyal nodded. 

"I do apologize, I will be back shortly." He left the room, hiding whatever it was that was supposed to be lunch by the turn of his body. 

The Zarthan nuzzled her chin and pinged cuddles. 

That wasn't so bad. That wasn't -great- either, but it could have been a LOT worse. Android ethics. How did that work anyway? 

THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP Likely more furry footsteps. 

About 6 Zarthans--much larger Zarthans!!--tumbled out of one of the doors and she was flooded with a mass of emotions "OMG I'M SO HAPPY TO BE HERE I'M HAPPY TO SEE YOU OMG OMG OMG ooh. shiny floor. Oooh piddy floor. Hey everybody!! Feel the pretty floor I'm feeling. I think that's a caulking ridge. This is amazing! LET'S ALL GO HUG KEEDO!"

EEEP??! The largest one, if they were a predator, could have made short lunch out of her!

She backed up and the little Zarthan she was holding flooded her head with a mostly-textures update that was probably directed at them. 

All six of them stopped short on the edge of the carpet and tilted their heads. 

"SAAAAAADS!" they all pinged. "WE WANTED TO HUG -THIS TEXTURE!!!-" 

She now had 6 different entities' experiences of being hugged and SKITCHED by someone she didn't know. That was extremely disconcerting and overloading and incredibly personal-feeling, being petted by somebody she didn't know and was currently inhabiting, and she sat down on the couch, too overwhelmed to keep standing.

A Sisko-colored human came up the stairs after them. "I hope you don't mind, I sent you a text but I didn't get a response and I have a weddin' to attend to-- ohgoodlordy hi." 

Ziyal waved. 

The human waved back. This person seemed to present as more "female" than any human she'd seen so far, even back on the station.

All 6 Zarthans ran over to the human and were probably pinging her everything. 

"I have a very awkward question..." Ziyal said. 

"Yes sugar?"

"Are you... you look female, but I'm not normally... er, I don't normally look like this and I, um, I... can't tell gender on your species. This face, the other face has a girl nose and I have no idea what's going on."

The person started to talk, but Ziyal's brain was suddenly WAY too full of 6 Zarthans' worth of information to hear her. They flooded her head with what exactly defined gender on humans. And Zarthans. And Cardassians. And dogs. And purple aliens called Dionesians. And parakeets. And long haired aliens called Delco. And a very large file on how to always be respectful of pronouns and that trans people were a thing. And that Zarthans didn't really care what gender you were as long as you were nice and let them hug you once in awhile. 

Why the file on Cardassians? That seemed slightly out of place with the rest of them.

"Now can we hug you???? Pls pls pls pls pleeeeeese? We'll hug softly!!" 6 sets of soul-face eyes. 

She gulped and nodded and all six of them came over and petted her very gently, like they thought she'd bite. 

"You gonna be okay sugar?" the woman said. "Bang, you've got a Shuriakai!" She yelled back to the kitchen. 

"I was informed of this, thank you Bella." Bang called through the hallway. "You may leave the Zarthans here; would you like anything for the wedding?"

"Just this, I already handled the food, although if you wanna send someone to the house to clean up the kitchen, I'd be much obliged."

Bang came out with a plate of cookies and warm milk and put them down on the coffee table in front of Ziyal. He--(Bang was a he!)--stood there and looked adorable. 

And really, nothing else too exciting happened. It was lovely and disconcerting and bizarre and strange and she got lots and lots of hugs and good food and they all seemed to handle this like it was COMPLETELY NORMAL.  
\----  
(If you read the previous chapter, the front end of this was my attempt to PG the R. If you didn't, erm, Kaleb beat up Keedo... and some other things... and now he's in med bay. All very VC1 Novel and not very ST like, at all.)  
\----  
BASHIR:

They beamed Keedo out of where he'd been kidnapped to and directly to the med bay. He curled up on the bed and lay there, staring off into nothing.

Bashir ran a scanner on him and then remembering that scanners gave all kinds of terrible nonsensical readouts on him and switched to visual analysis instead. 

According to the tricorders, Keedo had a functioning nervous system, circulatory system, and pieces of working muscle and digestive systems, but everything else was long since dead, which made zero sense and was completely useless. 

According to a visual check and comparing it to how he'd been earlier that day, he'd been severely beaten. 

"What happened?!" he said. 

Keedo stared off into space and curled up tighter, swallowed, and said finally "We crossed plot streams and it turned out badly," he said.

That was unhelpful. 

The doctor tested an X-ray on him and the X-ray still gave useful information despite the "dead". 

"You've got comminuted fractures in the ulna and radius of both arms--"

"That happened in Mizu's movie," 

What? 

"Blood loss and dehydration--"

"He tried to drain me, because movie. And that part was also in Mizu's ballet."

"Are you being serious?"

Keedo curled up tighter and stopped talking altogether. That might not have been the best thing to say, but -ballet-? How was this part of a ballet? 

Bashir kept checking his patient and noticed significant evidence of violent sexual assault. 

Someone stumbled into the med bay and the doctor looked up. 

Cardassian. 

Blue hair. 

Very long blue hair. 

On a Cardassian. 

WHAT? 

The man started to walk forward. Oh. Elroy had mentioned "blue".

"ALEX?" Bashir said. 

Alex was only looking at Keedo. "AIE CANNOAH LEAVE YEH ALONE FOR TWO HOURS WIHHOUH SHIH HAPPENIN AA YEH, EH?!"

Keedo tried to cover his face with his arms and couldn't because of the bone restructuring device and settled for just not looking at anything. 

"You might want to be a bit more... gentle? about this," Bashir said, glancing at the recent evidence.

Alex leaned back and popped his neck, seeming to go into a mini trance. 

"Don't scan it," Keedo said, still trying to angle away from everyone existing. "if you haven't already," the last part came out a bare tiny mumble.

Alex tipped forward out of the trance. "O'ay?" 

Bashir put Keedo on a LOT of sedatives and came over. 

Talking to Alex was MUCH less disconcerting now. Now that all the motions were on a body that didn't look exactly like a very good friend of his, they were much less uncanny valley and a lot less creepy to watch. He still seemed to move like an off-kilter marionette though. 

"I'm going to take that as he's not okay with discussing what happened, but he was, um, taken off the ship and when we beamed him back, he was in this condition." He turned back to Keedo. How many of those sedatives would work in a system that looked like it should be nonfunctioning?

"May I tell him what you said about, um," he called back, then realized that yelling that over the entire med bay would ruin the concept of confidentiality. He went over and said softly, "about what you said about crossing plots and the movie and the ballet?"

Keedo nodded and didn't otherwise pull back. Some of the sedatives were working at least. 

Bashir went back to where Alex was. 

"He mentioned that the plot lines crossed, and that things that happened here happened in a movie, mostly the comminuted fractures in the lower arms and blood loss. He also mentioned a ballet?"

Alex ran his hands up through the bangs and down through the ponytail. "Aie cannoah leave 'im alone AH ALL. Avar. Fuhhin' code. Whaa aie'm wonnerin' is whaie 'ee didn' enn up deah, eh? Thaa's how the fuhhin' movie enns," 

(Translation--> I can't leave him alone AT ALL. Ever! Fucking code. What I'm wondering is why he didn't end up dead, eh? That's how the fucking movie ends.)

Bashir bit his lip and flicked a glance back at his patient. Some cultures would consider what appeared to have happened as being -worse- than death, but it did highly depend on the culture. 

Alex was back to rocking visibly back and forth, making his hair swish. "Thar's a lock on 'im, if ee enns up deah, ee goes back 'ome, so aie guess yeh rescued 'im -arley-? Which is... good? Aie guess? Buh whaie the 'no look up'?" That part was mostly to himself.

(Translation--> there's a lock in him. If he ends up dead, he goes back home, so I guess you rescued him -early-? Which is...good? I guess? But why the 'no look up'?)

"Can I ask what he meant by movie?" Bashir asked.

If he didn't know Alex at least a little bit, that was -extremely- medical looking. The man's hands curled into tight dystonic-looking posturing and every sentence was punctuated by twitching that could have been equally part dystonia or part autistic stimming. 

"Thar's a zillion frikkin' univarses. 'Ee -was- the MC of a prequel before Zamiel starteh jumpin' univarses. An' 'is -code- is really similar aa somebody aie ussa know, so.... we hang ouh." 

(Translation--> there's a zillion freaking universes. He -was- the MC of a prequel before Zamiel started jumping universes. And his code is really similar to somebody I used to know, so, we hang out.)

Going by what the man had -said- earlier, about it being psychosomatic, it only qualified as intense stimming.

This was an extremely uncomfortable subject, and looking back at Keedo, Bashir wasn't sure Alex knew how uncomfortable and since Keedo didn't want him to know, as a doctor, Bashir was bound by patient confidentiality. 

"The movie 'ee's a prequel to on my original worl, VC1, is laike... Ayn Rand or Quran 50 years affer ih was written or somethin. In the movie, 'ee's from a prequel. Between all the univarses, ih's a diffren' dimension,"

(Translation--> the movie he's a prequel to on my original world, VC1, is like Ayn Rand or Quran 50 years after it was written or something. In the movie, he's from a prequel. Between all the universes, it's a different dimension.)

"This Kaleb's from VC1," Keedo said from the bed. "I totally thought it would be the movie, all legit, and then..." 

"We should probably let him rest," Keedo needed to heal and the bone regrowth device was giving out quiet error beeps.

Alex popped his neck and some of the dystonia relaxed out of his hands. "Aie shoul jus... eh, whaaever. Aie haa some essplainin'-slash-apologizin' aie needa do for some people."

(Translation--> I should just...eh, whatever. I have some explaining/apologizing I need to do for some people.)

The two of them looked at each other across the room and then Alex stumbled out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for moral reasons why Kaleb kiiiiiinda can get away with that morallysorta: from -his- vantage point in the FailNovel, he feels equally as violated, and the whole moral conundrum IS the effing FailNovel. >.


	7. Chapter 7

KALEB: 

Think think think. Plan ahead. Figure out what went wrong. What even -happened-?

The room was so full of papers taped to the walls he had a growing stack of less useful ones in the cardboard box under the table to clear space for more. 

In the other universe, he'd had an internal screaming fixation to throw himself at Keedo's feet and beg for crumbs, forgiveness, -something-, and the only way to shut it off was to go all Van Helsing on him. 

When he'd finally succeeded, Kaleb found he'd traded fire and insanity for cold and numbness that took months to taper off into mental background noise. 

Here in this universe, the fire was back. 

This time, he'd had a plan. There was the person that was Keedo, the asshole of a vampire who'd addicted him, trapped him, tried to bind him into being nothing but his numb, mindless bootlicker--and then there was the blood he carried in his veins and used to bind him with. 

Dazzling poison, magnificent wine. 

Kaleb had killed vampires, made vampires only to drain them, and nothing could come close to the world that opened up when he was under the power of Keedo's blood. Whether that was because Keedo was the one who'd locked him into it or if it was representative of Keedo's power level, he had no way of finding out. 

When under the strongest of its effect, other than the compulsion trying to force him into awe and terror and his eyes exchanging seeing on the visual spectrum for a vibrating haze full of millions of lines running back and pulling him in toward a white fire that at the center was someone who didn't deserve it--it was amazing. 

When under it, Kaleb's already inward-focused mind spun in completely and there was nothing but the screaming compulsion--and an awareness of everything in his body. Like being able to go in and have a one-on-one conversation with every single fiber of his being. His awareness in near-perfect syncronization with the functions of his body systems. Asking his meniscus why it hurt and -getting an answer-. Swallowing and being as aware of his internal organs' needs as he was his skin. 

Sex with mere mortals compared to that was like flat grape soda in the third grade compared to turning the fabled cask of Amontillado real. 

Caught between the tension of resisting the binding and the exhiliration, he was insane for hours and hellishly powerful for days afterward. 

With that in mind, armed with technology from the wrong universe altogether, the intent when he'd abducted Keedo was to pull off an Odysseus and the Sirens--but when he came to in the empty roundabout with a very broken wall and looked around, he knew he'd picked the wrong myth. 

He wasn't built like Odysseus. He was built like Hercules and had broken his "mast", unbound, and... what? 

Prodding the haze of the hours of insanity in his mind brought back nothing but a feeling like he'd slain Grendel in his universe and arrived here in this universe to meet Grendel's Mother. 

Didn't Beowulf die of a dragon at the end of that epic?

He side-eyed his reflection in the mirror and took off his shirt. The vampire power still coursed through him and the effects of draining the vampire here were obvious. He'd shaved months off his training, and now all he needed to do was maintain it. He flexed and watched where it was similar and where the muscles were the same and where they different from his human body. The gray skin. The black hair. The strong, sturdy neck. The ridging.

What happened when Beowulf -became- the dragon? 

-beedoop-

The door chime went off. 

He threw the shirt back on and yanked the designed-to-be-easy-to-pull-down papers into the box and kicked it under the table. then nudged it with his toe to be perpendicular to the wall. 

"MIN!" he yelled for "come in". 

He nudged the box with his toe to make it perpendicular to the wall and the door opened. 

It was the Cardassian on the station he'd met earlier--except with much better posture. 

Before Kaleb could say anything, the man held up a hand. 

"Ah, before you make any comments about how I may have been acting in the past few days, let me assure you that I've been switched back out, and I'm back to taking care of my spine again." 

Kaleb flicked a glance at the bed that had been messed up last time when they'd randomly decided to just fall on it. The last time he'd met this person, they'd gone off on how it was Shurikai and if he watched the show, he'd meet someone different. 

This was apparently that person. "Well aren't you going to let me in?" they said. 

"So, you're from this universe then," Kaleb said, not moving and still sifting through what to do next. "Dang. That means it wasn't you that knew Nietzsche."

The Cardassian shooed dust out of the air like he was brushing away the concern. ""Does one ever really know Nietzsche? Beyond the parts that all seemed like common sense," he gave Kaleb a side-eye and paused, "there are no facts, only interpretations." He leaned forward, suppressing a grin. "Who knows? They might have got it from me!"

"I love this universe," Kaleb thought to himself. Out loud: "Well I lucked out. Come on in!" 

The man sat like a normal person -in the chair this time- and accidentally kicked the box of papers, noticed, and pushed it with his foot out of his way, making sure to keep it lined up -against the wall-. 

Lucked out indeed. 

Kaleb ordered red leaf tea out of the replicator and brought it over, hoping that the habit "feed the guests" he got growing up wasn't some kind of Cardassian taboo he didn't know about. 

The universe native didn't seem to think anything of it, and red leaf tea was actually something Kaleb genuinely liked having exist. It didn't throw off his calorie count for the day (5 calories/8oz, same as coffee!) and it tasted good, too. 

After half the glass, the man put it down. "I don't know if you ever found out my name or what the person I switched out with went by, but I'm Garak, the tailor on this station." 

"Kaleb Thompson," said Kaleb, "and I'm a Gul here. Back in my universe, I mostly work with real estate--" And vampires, he thought to himself "--and I train. A lot." He pointed with his eyes at the pull up bar. 

"From what I've seen in the newsreels, you appear to have switched out with Damar, and I must say in the few days you've been here, you've taken him from an unambitious inebriate all the way to a considerably able-bodied Gul." He pointed across the table at him and shook a finger. "I wish I had been that lucky. My counterpart seeemed to be trying to wrench every joint I own." 

So all of that--all--of it was something unique to the counterpart, including the twisted-in leg. 

"You suddenly have me worried about my original body back..." he stopped himself and mulled over the next word to say besides "home". Screw "home". "Back in my original universe." 

Okay, too many uses of 'original', but this guy talked like a walking thesaurus and it was stretching Kaleb's brain a bit. He understood him, he just couldn't keep up! Who knew "inebriate" was a noun? 

"Is that a concern for you?" Garak asked. "Something you want to return to?" 

Kaleb sighed. "I worked -really- hard on that body, but the rest of it?" On a human face, running his hands down his cheeks and closing them on each other in front was calming. On a wutao face, it followed the two ridges running down the jaw and just amplified the question: "Do you want to go back?" 

It was hard to think objectively while still under Keedo's blood magic, but other than the utterly beautiful human body he had, which was only truly beautiful because HE'D spent many many hours on it, there was nothing to return back -to-. Keedo, his universe's Keedo, had ruined everything he'd wanted to keep from childhood, he'd had to find new things then, he'd find new things here. 

He stood up--and launched into a full blown tirade, sifting through words and trying to pin down exactly what he -wanted- that was here a lot more than it was there, without coming across as Unpatriotic. 

American Patriotism didn't even really mean the same thing anyway. Every reason he had to dislike America fed right into why he liked Cardassia in the first place.  
\----

GARAK: 

Kaleb was so easy to direct it was -boring-. Book quotes and appearance compliments and he'd do whatever Garak wanted. 

To make it even more boring, their goals were already in line with each other. Kaleb didn't need to be pushed in any direction because he was already GOING that direction. He could be as obstinate as Dukat and this wouldn't be a problem. 

When asked if he wanted to return to his own universe, Kaleb stood up and hammed his response up into a full blown speech. 

He would defend Cardassia all the way up until it threatened his personal survival, which was exactly how Garak thought anyway. 

When Kaleb finally threw himself back in the seat and drained the rest of his tea, Garak was inclined to throw a random wrench in this all on his own, just to make it more challenging. 

"So what do I have that you'd want, anyway?" Kaleb said. 

Case in point. He was used to having to convince people to do what he wanted, and here was someone asking to be assistive. 

"I never would have found this out if our two universes hadn't crossed, but it turns out my reason for staying on this station is more...malleable... than I'd thought." Garak took a drink of the last of the red leaf tea to hide the unexpected blast of emotion attached to "malleable". "Since you seem to have, well, -butchered-, everyone who'd protest my return, I thought I'd request passage back with you." 

Did Kaleb catch the cannibalism quip?

Nope. 

He seemed too spent from giving a speech, just nodding along like this sounded like a great idea. 

Sitting across from him with a Federation-style vase and little plants sticking out of it at the wrong angle, Garak was suddenly reminded of what it had been like meeting Bashir for the first time. 

This could have been heaven. 

If someone as easy to sway and as situationally powerful as Kaleb was showed up earlier AND Bashir wasn't some fake nothing invented by the enemy to take over the Alpha Quadrant, he could have had taken everything, lost nothing, had it all. 

All it would take would be wrapping Kaleb around his hand and using him to create a situation that brought Bashir home with him, rigging it so neither the doctor nor the Federation nor Cardassia would question it. He was a -doctor- after all. It wasn't hard. 

But the Founders had made him all up out of wholecloth. 

If the cup in his hands were anything less sturdy than the ceramic, it would have cracked or shattered it from how hard he held it, shunting the emotion into it and keeping a placid face around Kaleb. 

Maybe the "Gul" being an open book was a good thing. It didn't technically qualify as "avenging" because Bashir hadn't -died-, he just didn't exist to begin with, but Garak had the entire Dominion to wreak vengeance on. 

\-----  
ALEX:

Alex stumbled out of the infirmary over to the tailoring shop. Firstly, he needed to and explain some things, like how Shurikais worked and where Enabran Tain went, and secondly, he needed to get seen in public -with- Garak so nobody thought that he was somehow one of those horrible horror movies "omg you're transforming!!".

And the tailor shop was closed. 

Looking up where Garak went wasn't an automatic program. It would require freezing time, and then he'd get Qs bothering him. 

Want kanar. 

Not in the mood to look human.

Want kanar. 

Not in the mood to look human. 

Can't look wutao because everybody's think it was still Garak, getting taken over by something blue-haired monster thing, and that was just going to cause problems for him and the "effin' famous tailer".

Well if they were all going to think he was a blue-haired monster, let's -be- a blue-haired monster, just an -awesome- blue-haired monster and not a a horrifying-squicky-everybody- thinks-there's-something-wrong-with-Garak. 

Alex had 3 forms accessible by default and wouldn't piss off Q by accessing them: human, wutao, and a "monster" form. 

This Universe had Naausicans. Even his "monster" form wasn't as scary as Naausicans. Just taller. Maybe he could downsize it a bit? 

He tweaked the height and shifted into it, then headed for the bar.  
\---

QUARK:

It was a lovely day at the bar.

He couldn't explain what had happened with Garak, but it made the Ferengi rich, and that was all that mattered. It was extremely bizarre, but he now had several hundred bars of gold-pressed latinum and a lot more on the way. Of course, if Garak came looking for it, he'd strike a deal with him, but otherwise, he was just going to sit on it and enjoy the windfall.

If he didn't ask questions, hopefully nobody'd ask questions back.

"Haie, cannaie geaa a kanar?" 

Quark turned to the sound and sort of startled. He had no idea what this was. Bipedal. Spindly. Off center. Moving constantly. What was probably hair going all the way to the ground in bright blue--and a mouth probably descended from some kind of animal Quark wanted to never meet ever.

"Well things out of the Gamma Quadrant just keep getting weirder and weirder?" Quark thought to himself. Put on your best Alpha Quadrant Happy Face and hope they pay in cash??

"Kanar, huh?" Quark said out loud. "You're in luck, I've got the best bunch of Kanar off of Cardassia," (and a whole bunch of it. If you want it, GREAT! Take it!)

"Yaaaaaay." That was a way too long of a tongue flicking out and back in. "Aie haa a shihhyass day," 

Whatever this was, they looked like they'd had a "shittyass" day. Quark knew nothing of the body language rules of this species, but they were shifting back and forth in long, slow movements and the slurry speech was dragged out and lethargic. 

"You've come to the right place," Quark said, leaning toward the alien like it was a nice normal customer he could trust to get paid by. "Not meaning to brag, but, ya know, this is the best bar for that kind of thing in the whole quadrant, and we only charge--" he took what he normally charged and doubled it. Morn caught the man's attention and shook his head ever so slightly. 

"Eh! Thaa guy! Hai!" The alien seemed to recognize and like Lurians anyway. Lurians used Latinum. Please use latinum please use latinum. 

"Aie needa noh do this. The lass taime aie wenn an' dih somethin' weird in a bar, the doccor goh fuhhin' mad ah me, buh--" he slammed his hands down on the counter and looked at Quark at the most terrifying angle, like the neck joint didn't attach correctly. "How much aa thaa pay for, eh?" 

Quark looked down.

Brick after brick after brick after brick after brick of latinum piled up under the counter top--the whole length of the bar. One minute there was air and the next there was goldpressed latinum. LOTS of latinum. He checked it. He checked it again. He checked it through the computer. It was real. 

Scary-looking, Lurian-liking, spindly monster-whatever-it-was, it could drink here forever. It paid in latinum for sure. 

The alien leaned back and fell off the bench--straight back all the way to the ground and Quark ran around the counter. He was mostly back on his feet by the time Quark got all the way around. 

"Well, uh, hehheh," Quark chuckled. "Maybe Odo was right about getting backs on those things." he said to himself. To the alien: "Do you gamble??" he asked. 

The alien looked at the dabo tables, back at Quark, back at the dabo tables, back at Quark, all in slow motion. Finally "Aie yam a probabilihy programmer in my day job. Ih kinna takes the fun ouh aa gambling."

Darn. Oh well. 

"Yer the barkeep, how's this for bad? My frenn's in the ihfirmary, ee doesn' wann me lookin' up why, aie fuhhed up bein' one aa my favrih looks, an' the role I was spossa be on this Shurikai goh fuhhed up annieway, throwin' off the role dynamiihs, an' aie cannoah -check- 'cause aie don' wanna pissoff the Kyoos.." 

(Translation: "You're the barkeep, how's this for bad? My friend's in the infirmary, he doesn't want me looking up why. I fucked up being one of my favorite 'looks', and the role I was supposed to be on this Shurikai got fucked up anyway, throwing off the role dynamics, and I can't -check- 'cause I don't want to piss off the Qs." More dragged out than normal! ^_^') 

Quark calculated how much space was under that bar times the width, length, and height of bars of latinum and was very happy he was naturally all ears even if he had no idea what this thing was talking about or even if he was decoding the phrasing correctly. He'd watch them stand here talk in zombie-slow motion for however long that latinum would pay for, and that was a -long- time. 

Luckily, he didn't have to. They rolled their head around on the not-normal joint. "All aie wanna do... is parteh. Noh laike singin', jus' laike... chillin. Happy crowd, everybody drunk off thaa wannsa be."  
\----

KEEDO: 

Keedo wandered out of the infirmary and aimed for Odo's. 

"Hi, can I request a tracking device?" he said. 

"Whatever for?" Odo asked. 

Keedo counted on his hands the number of times he'd been kidnapped off of various Deep Space Nines on one hand, and how many times he'd intentionally -beamed- off a Deep Space Nine. 2/0 wasn't bad--but who in their life gets kidnapped TWICE off of space stations that don't exist in their universe? He wanted something behind him all of a sudden, worried Kaleb would show up out of nowhere. 

Odo gave him one, Keedo thanked him and walked out. 

Ooh hey. A crowd at Quark's! People! That would be fun. 

Wait, Alex was back in the universe as himself, and that was likely the cause of a crowd that size at this time of day. And Keedo wondered if Alex was -mad- at him from the way he'd gone off about never being able to leave him anywhere. The worst bit was that it was true. Every universe they'd ever been separated, nasty things happened to Keedo and Zamiel and Alex had to go rescue him. 

Maybe Alex was tired of it? 

That was a terrifying thought. 

Alex was literally an ocean in some ways. He'd started out as a water deity. Blue and inviting on the surface and deep as hell with ten million unknowns under the surface. And unpredictable as weather. 

Keedo remembered the other time some alt dimension Kaleb showed up in VC2 and was scared enough he backed up against a wall. That had been bad. 

That hadn't been -this- bad. 

He crouched down and leaned up against the wall. Nobody was paying him any attention which was fine with him. 

He'd expected death out of Kaleb. He'd expected draining. He'd expected the abject terror. The man was -famous- for killing him, and they'd gone and shown up in a universe where Kaleb's character killed his character. 

He'd been expecting running into Kaleb to be horrible. Not this horrible. Not this -kind- of horrible. He didn't even have a frame of reference to know how to -handle- it and it was making him crazy. 

And now he'd gone and crammed himself into a little nook on the DS9 promenade trying to figure out of he was taking Alex's "cannoah go anniewhar wihhou you" as nothing but a misunderstanding due to him being extremely stressed out and humiliated or if it actually -meant- something. 

Through the wall, there was a sound of a teleporter and then something crackled behind him. 

\-----  
JADZIA, about 3 minutes before:

Jadzia wanted to go to the bar. Jadzia was on Ops duty. But she wanted to go to the bar. But she was on Ops duty. First drink was free at Quark's tonight. But -why-? Free anything at Quark's usually had either an epic story behind it or he was up to something, or both. 

They had a com signal from Gul Kaleb. She flicked it on. 

"It's been nice getting to know you; I have events to attend to on Cardassia." He leaned forward in his seat and grinned. "Thank you and have a great rest of your day!" 

"Okay then!" Jadzia said, and his runabout detatched from the station and went into warp, back to Cardassia. Dang. She'd kinda wanted to get to know that guy. He'd actually referenced one of the teachers from the Trill homeworld she'd known on her very first host in his speech. 

(OOC: "thank you and have a great rest of your day" is MINE from work. It's basically "fuck you" and he's more directing it at "The Protagonist Centric Morality!!" than Jadzia specifically, but ^_^)  
\-----  
back to KEEDO

Keedo startled at the sound of crackling and jumped back away from the wall, expecting an explosion, but nothing else happened. He breathed a huge sigh of relief. If it had been going to go off, with Alex right there in the universe, he would have gotten rescued again, so it wasn't "something was going to happen and Alex didn't do it", it was "you're fine, surprisingly enough lately."

But what was that sound? It was probably just a creaky pipe or something, but the teleport -and- the pipe? 

He followed the wall one way and it was a Bajoran something or other shop. They gave him weird looks and then he remembered he looked half them and half wutao and he backed out of their shop again.

Following it the other way, it was the tailor shop. 

It was closed, unlike everything else at the moment. Where -had- Garak gone off to? Was this weird enough to bug Odo about? Was this weird enough bug Bashir about? Was this weird enough to bug ANYBODY about? 

He thought of the various Shurikaies he'd been on. One person returning whilst everyone else is still switched out was rare, almost unheard of. 

He didn't Shurikai -as- people as often as say, Schtoruka, and when he did, it was often unpleasant. 

There was that utterly bizarre one where he'd sort of been stuffed into sitting in Deanna Troi's seat while Alex and Nugowan went on a long weird banter between the two, comparing oppression and unwanted stereotypes of Irish people (which Alex technically wasn't and sorta sounded like he was) and Jewish people (which Nugowan was from the wrong planet to be and people still thought he was sometimes). 

Now how would -Troi- react to just her popping up and instead of Data, there was a giant Samoan person with white hair? Instead of Worf, flat-faced brown human with a red bandanna. Instead of Riker, a gangly freckled human. 

And her prim and proper (and bald!) captain replaced by blue-haired something-or-other all sprawled out in every direction on the seat. 

Troi was a wise, empathic Betazoid who could immediately tell none of them had malicious intentions against her--and she still would have been intensely suspicious and quite a bit freaked out, especially in the first couple minutes before they could explain what was going on. 

Garak? Infamously paranoid Cardassian. Not only that, he was a Paranoid Cardassian who may or may not have had temporary access to Alex's World Running Warehouse. 

At best, they owed him a nice tidy debriefing. At worst, they'd given the spy nobody could quite trust files on -every single ST universe the Sauseristans had ever had access to-. Yes this was definitely worth reporting even if the sound was nothing but a pipe. 

He went to Sisko's office. This was more a "btw, station's business" than a matter of immediate security--and ten minutes later, Senior Staff and Keedo were all sitting in the debriefing room around a nice new table. 

Bashir and Sisko's conversation went something like "is Alex in this universe now?" "yes I saw him recently" "Well where is he?" "I don't know, he's Cardassian with -floor length bright blue hair- he can't be that hard to miss!" and they sent a security detail out to look for him because he didn't have a communicator. 

The security detail's conversation with Sisko through the communicators went something like "Sir, we found something with bright blue hair, but it sure isn't Cardassian" "What -is- it?" "DRUNK OFF MAH ASS EH?!" through the communication network and Keedo resisted the urge to hide his face in embarrassment. 

"Get un-drunk and get up to the debriefing room--" Sisko started to say and there was Alex's normal splash-sound teleport and he appeared on the far end of the room. 

Kira and Odo jumped back and pulled out phasers. Sisko and Bashir had the face of "wt.. well that explains a lot??", Jadzia thought it was funny and OBrien looked too scared to move.

"WHY are you in your Halloween Costume?!" Keedo cried. 

Alex leaned on the table, popped his neck--and shoved the glasses up WITH THE TIP OF THE TONGUE! "'ll since -yeh- all know aiem' noh somethin messed up aa the only Cardassian on the ship," He snapped his fingers with the weird gesture and was back to wutao.

Odo relaxed. Kira stayed aiming her phaser at him. Alex ignored her, or possibly didn't notice at all, and flopped down into the nearest chair and sprawled out, taking up the whole area at the end of the table. "Thar. Happeh naow?" 

(Translation--> well since you all know I'm not something messed up with the only Cardassian on the ship, *shift to Cardassian form*, there. Happy now?) 

"Er," Bashir looked him up and down. "Whatever that was it's not your normal form then?" 

"Issa effin' Shinigami, an' aie yam still drunk." Yes, yes he was. (OOC: from Death Note! Yes, Alex has a human form, a Cardassian form, and a Shinigami form as his only automatic default formats.) 

Sisko started to say something grumpy and Keedo just started talking to get the attention off him, explaining the way Shurikai didn't usually drop just one person back and how that would be unnerving for anyone--let alone someone like Garak. 

Odo tapped his communicator. "Computer, locate Garak?"

"Garak is not on board this station." said the computer.

"Aie tried aa hide the weirdass scary weird from the ressa the -Station-. Don' talk weird aroun' the Changelin' Doccor, geaa a good esscuse for Morn, don' stumble aroun' in public until things were clear thaa stuff was fixed." He ran his hand across the chufa a couple times. "THE PARR WHAR AIE'D HAFFA NOAH FRIH -HIM- OUH WASN' PARR AA THE TYPICAL SEQENCE OF EVENNS!" He looked over at Keedo. "Aie prolly look laike fuhhin' naieemare fuel." 

(Translation--> I tried to hide the weirdass scary weird from the rest of the station. Don't talk weird around the Changeling Doctor, get a good escuse for Morn, don't stumble around in public until things were clear that stuff was fixed. The part where I have to not freak HIM out wasn't part of the typical sequence of events! I probably look like fuckin' nightmare fuel...) 

"Dude," Keedo said. "We did Karaoke."

The closest Keedo could think of to sum up how he reacted to that was someone popping a waterballon, but on an emotional level more than a physical. With the way Alex was, it was important to clarify such things. Physically, the realization was all micro-expressions. 

"Fuh." said Alex. "'ll now aie feel -really- bad." 

That hit him harder than Keedo expected. "Aie dih noh think thaa through. Now aie feel bad for -every- Shurikai aieve' aver been -on-. Thaa kinna thing is typical aa Shurikaies. Like showin' uppas Dukat an' tryinna fix the orphanage. Yer in Shurikai. Yeh fuh with things." 

(Translation--> Fuck. Well now I fell really bad. I did not think that through. Now I feel bad for -every- Shurikai I've ever been on. That kind of thing is typical for Shurikais. Like showing up as Dukat and trying to fix the orphanage. You're in Shurikai. You fuck with things.) 

Oh hey. The weird Shurikai where practically everyone in Zamiel's neighborhood had showed up as Cardassians. Keedo showed up as some random politician back on Cardassia--AND THE HOUSE HE'D LIVED IN WAS HAUNTED. 

As Keedo-in-Shurikais went, it was one of the best ones he'd had in awhile. The only pain he felt in the entire event was bumping his shin on the stairs once. Completely normal. Could happen to anybody chasing a shrieking ancient Hebitian ghost-demon-something-whatever that was and trying to get it to calm down. He wasn't a BackDoor there. It was not a bad Shurikai. 

"Aie guess aie was respeccin' the characcer presentation?" He was vaguely twitching on the chair. "'Ee's the effin' famous tailer an' ih's a Shurikai. Yeh do yer own shih, yeh juss make ih... relevant." 

(Translation--> I guess I was respecting the character presentation? He's the Effin' Famous Tailor and it's a Shurikai. You do your own shit, you just make it... relevant.)

That was a rather loaded look in Bashir's general direction. 

"So now what do we do about it?" Bashir asked.

"Aie anno?" The intonation said that was "I dunno". "Aie cannoah look shih up or we geaa Qs. Aie'm gonna sih 'eere an' seccon guess -AVARY EFFIN SHURIKAI AIE'VE AVER BEEN ON-."

(Translation--> I dunno. I can't look up shit or we get Qs. I'm going to sit here and second-guess every freaking shurikai I've ever been on!) 

Oh dear. Alex looked like he wanted to go sit in an ocean of alcohol now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Nietzsche: http://www.theperspectivesofnietzsche.com/nietzsche/ntruth.html and nope. Cardassian education legitly has a "how to memorize really really well" and he's only heard of it just barely. Alex has studied it... but mostly -in reference to VC1-. So both Garak and Alex only know Nietzsche well enough to quote because of Kaleb. ^_^!) 
> 
> I very nearly named this thing "Beyond Good and Evil: A Star Trek Fanfic" and then my sister was like "but everybody'll -remember- the Syphilis title better..." so, "Saved by Syphilis" it is.


	8. Chapter 8

GARAK: 

DS9 had problems.

Cardassia had problems. 

The Founders were about to have a problem. A BIG one. Garak wanted the Founders -gone-.

But first he had to re-acclimate to being back on the planet. 

The best part about being home was the very open spaces. That was legitimately awesome, and nothing from the station compared to that. The food was genuinely better. Not replicated. Not tasteless. No always being out of basic things like red leaf tea, and when the tea was real, it was old and nasty. 

After that, "how does it compare to the station" was a sliding scale of half political issues and half biological issues. He'd been so used to the station set to "freezing" that it was hard to stay away from the air conditioner now. Politically, Enabran Tain was "dead", Kaleb didn't know anybody, and being himself being exiled for five years didn't help matters. That made enemies. He'd had to shoot Entek himself, which was depressing. 

Unfortunately, that meant he was spending way more time dealing with Kaleb than he wanted to. Any other options would take years to get what he needed out of them. 

Kaleb was quite amicable in public, if nitpicky enough to be noticeable--and utterly horrific in "private", and for now, he was just going to have to put up with it. Switching him back out for Damar would be a decent backup plan, but for now, leaving him there worked slightly better. 

He was putting time into resetting up things, backing things up, planning ahead when he got an emergency communication. 

"Shit shit shit we got one." Kaleb said. 

"Got one what?" He flicked through the security camera network he'd hijacked into everywhere Kaleb would go and wasn't picking up on anything. 

"I'm gonna just beam you here and--"

He had a phaser stuffed into both pockets before beaming there. Was it "-By- the power of Christ -I- compel thee?" or "The power of Christ -compels- thee?" He was kicking himself for not having it memorized it for sure when he showed up in a very small room with a bright energy wall right in front of him. 

His first reaction was that this was a prison cell and it had every paranoid alarm in his head going off all at the same time, combined with the tiny room, low hanging ceiling, TINY ROOM, sticky air, very scary. 

He stepped back, reaching for a phaser--and Kaleb moved away from behind him and stood next to him, holding up a remote control device pointed at the energy wall. The man pushed down the dial on one side and the wall dimmed, revealing an even smaller room, more like a closet carved right out of the bedrock, with someone in a Gul uniform curled up against one wall and screaming bizarre phrases at someone in a Legate uniform backed up standing against the other side. 

As soon as the light dimmed--the Legate went fluid and slammed a liquid brown fluid "fist" right at the wall, and Kaleb brightened it back up again, blocking them. 

Legate Nelkul was obviously a Changeling. 

And Kaleb was just standing there like he thought this was amazing. "Dude," he said. "We got one." 

Tinyroomtinyroomtinyroom. Don't think about the tiny room. Focus on what's going on around you. 

This was attached to that one bathroom under the stairwell in Gul Dukat's summer house Kaleb was staying at. There were multiple places in that residence with no cameras, which Garak had been trying to fix, but only the bathroom also followed his movement patterns. There was also a decent size private contractor bill on Kaleb's records recently, which is why it was so small Kaleb was having to duck a bit. 

It was still a prison, but he wasn't the prisoner, and all of Kaleb's body language read he was hoping he'd be complimented.

He had caught a Changeling after all, never mind -how-. 

"Of course you're between me and the doorway," Garak thought. Out loud: "This is extremely commendable, did you by chance have a method of removing any communication devices out of them?" 

"Tried a couple things, got a couple things," Kaleb pulled a small tray out of the part of the wall generating the energy field and it had multiple communication devices of varying types on it. "Not sure if I got -all- the things." 

Need to think. Can't think. Too small space to think. Unlike a couple other times back on the station being stuck in uncomfortably small spaces--this place was also accompanied by all the smells of the "home" soil as opposed to a metal something or other floating in space, making it worse, faster. 

"There was a device created by the Obsidian Order several years ago that should keep them from being able to--" Good excuse to leave the room. Confidentiality! 

He waved his hand for the door and Kaleb picked up the hint immediately. Up some steps, past a sliding hidden door in the wall, two steps through the bathroom and the room outside of it opened up to something three floor levels high. Wow, one of the first times Dukat's decadence came in handy. 

"It should be able to keep him from shifting and turning into anything. I have the file available if you've got a replicator," 

He replicated it and handed it to Kaleb, who happily took the hint and took it downstairs himself. 

"It can't have it there for long periods of time. It causes all kinds of disgusting little problems, but at least it can't morph itself -into- a communication device." Garak said. 

"I remember one episode where the guy that could goo turned himself into a string and somebody tripped on it. That's like, all I remember of this show. I was super little at the time." Kaleb gestured the little moves as he spoke. 

"Ah yes, this world is visual literature to you," 

"I wish I would have paid attention, but I didn't think it'd ever be relevant. Were you a main character?" 

Odd question. "How should I know?" 

"Good point," Kaleb said. 

Hm. Did he -want- to be a main character in something? Alex had gone off about "yer the effin' famous tailer who talks like the effin' famous tailer". What did -Alex- know about him from their literature? There was absolutely nothing "famous" about his tailor cover job. 

"You seem to have some sort of story yourself," he said. 

Kaleb got a big thing of red leaf tea and went on to explain -everything-. Knowing Kaleb's story traded the simple-but-gross "you're a cannibal" for the complicated-and-still-gross "you're something called a ghoul that needs to drink blood from things called vampires. Dukat switched out for some vampire named Leonard Gabor and you've been feeding him political enemies and then he wouldn't drink Changelings because he's decided they're like something called "weres" back on their world because they can change forms." 

Uh-huh. 

WHAT? 

But they had a way to capture and detain Changelings, and that made his plans a lot easier, along with Kaleb's idea of strategically using Protagonist Centric Morality. 

The next bit was to get it working in a much bigger room! And after everything with Bashir, he was going to enjoy watching a Founder suffer.   
\----

Back on DS9: 

In a lull between sending out messages and waiting for them to come back, Alex, Keedo, and Jadzia all happened to be in a room together, with Keedo and Jadzia swapping stories about watching technology go from practically "hunter/gatherer" with some of her first hosts to "warp technology" and Alex wandering around the room, testing which Universe Code scans he could safely get away with using on his big screens.

"I figgured ih ouh," Alex said after a couple hours of them trying to figure out what was going on. 

Keedo and Jadzia looked up from a conversation about the progression of Postal Services. 

"Figured out what?" asked Jadzia.

"Aie enned up as the effin' bard!" 

Jadzia just blinked. Keedo looked like he wasn't sure if he was swallowing an agreement or not. 

"Aie popped in 'ere as the frikkin' epic rogue, an' aie geea on stage -one- taime, ONE taime, an' now aie goh stuffed in as the effin' bard. Aie don' wanna be the bard, dammih." 

(Translation--> I ended up as the fucking Bard! I popped in here as the freaking epic rogue, and I get on the stage one time, ONE time, and now I got stuffed in as the fucking Bard. I don't wanna be the Bard, dammit!) 

He typed in another code sequence and it showed a load screen. Mostly to himself: "eYeah, less' roll a 'Gather Information' check. Aie haa a 9+ poin' modifyer thing an' aie'm MISSIN' maie Computer of Epic Omniscience with a seventy zillion poin' plus modifier. Effin' fuh frikkin..." he went back to what he was doing.

(Translation--> yeah, let's roll a "gather information" check. I have a 9 point modifier thing and I'm missing my Computer of Epic Omnicience with a 70 zillion point plus modifier.)

"Is he always like this?" Jadzia asked.

"Yep," Keedo said. 

And Alex went back to poking things on the computer.   
\--

DEANNA TROI, Enterprise E (which happens to be Worfless because Directors and Actors and Shows and Movies didn't line things up well?): 

The Enterprise E crew was bumming around up by Andoria looking at odd color change patterns in the nearby stars when Q up and popped on the deck unannounced. 

"Picard, you're my favorite little human, and this dreadful snot of a man says he created humans, so would you mind either figuring out what it is he thinks he's doing or use your mellifluous voice on him and get him to quit?" Q popped in, said it, then snapped his fingers and someone else popped in.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?! I never said you could just drop me somewhere..." the new person yelled, saw everyone staring at him, stopped, frowned at the captain. "You're not Patrick Stewart, are you?" he said. 

Picard frowned and raised an eyebrow. "I'm Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise. And you are?"

"Great, of course you are. You actually are. This is insane. Marina Sirtis Troi. Johnathan Frakes Riker." the man shook his head, noticed a Vulcan science officer in the back. "And I legitimately have no idea who you are, and that... really... freaks me out. You're not ANY of the extras that were part of that cast! What episode is this? I never paid attention to people's fantasies--they should have been paying more attention to -me- and not coming up with drivel--and now I sort of regret it."

Troi looked him over. Exasperated. Annoyed. Frustrated. Feeling extremely out of his element. Seeing the Vulcan terrified him far more than it had any reason to, but it wasn't attached to "she is Vulcan" so much as "she should look familiar and doesn't". 

"Oh just keep him from trying to hack the universe, mmkay?" Q said. "There's someone else running -scans-, but that's all they are. -Scans-. This little "deity"--" he put air quotes around it "--keeps putting bugs in the system and then I have to go pick them apart because nobody else cares and really I have better things to do." 

Picard practically huffed in annoyance. "Right now, so do we. We're quite busy working out why the stars in the area don't appear to be normal, so go bother someone else!"

"Oh that!" he said. "That would be this guy's fault."

As long as he'd been on the ship, nothing odd had gone off with the stars. 

"Here, you keep him busy and you'll have no weird stars going off." And Q was gone, leaving the other "deity" behind. 

So far, the various Enterprise ships had met someone who said they were Apollo and probably wasn't, someone who said they were Feklar the Klingon War God and was verifiably not, -Q-, whatever Q was, and now they had someone who looked quite a bit like Michaelangelo's Christian God, complete with the slightly pinkish shirt. 

Troi and Picard exchanged glances. "And you are?" Picard asked the newcomer again. 

"I HAVE MANY NAMES!" the man started, then shrugged and looked a bit defeated. "But at this point, in this muckup of a universe, I suppose "Elroy" will have to do. No one's been angry or offended about that one yet." 

"Ah," Data said. "A reference to Genesis 16:13, from the Hebrew word "El", meaning "strength, might, or power" and a "Roi", loosely, "A god who sees me", although depending on the translation of the bible, it usually reads as--" 

"Thank you Data," Picard said, gently shutting him up. 

Data shrugged and went back to what he was doing. 

Picard frowned and walked up to Elroy and Troi sensed a slight bit of danger coming from something off the ship, and then they were under fire and being beamed out and the three of them were in a little jail cell with energy walls on all sides.

"Fuck, you're supposed to be Riker," said a voice through a speaker. "Shit, no time." 

Picard hit the communicator and it wasn't there. Elroy went on a tirade about "wrath of god" and "no one here respects me. Troi sensed. 

One person, likely the driver, and they were enjoying themselves WAY too much. 

After nearly six hours of getting no communication at all, they seemed to arrive somewhere and she picked up other emotions. Recognizably Geordi and Crusher and someone else, guarded, resisting being observed, and not here because they were enjoying themselves.


	9. Chapter 9

GARAK: 

Kaleb's plan seemed nothing short of insane. Fly around the Alpha Quadrant in his Cardassian stealth ship the Okomfo, pick planets at random, and fling the "Protagonists" at it and see what suspicious things cropped up around them. 

And the strangest part was that it seemed to be -working-.

Between Leonard-Gabor-the-Vampire-Detection-System and the "Protagonists", they'd found three Changelings that they had absolutely no other way of finding--but aside from the sheer lunacy of this plan, the problem was that the Founders were liable to figure it out at any moment. 

Bringing up the concern with Kaleb just returned a historical reference: "Ever heard of Christopher Columbus?" 

"Which planet?" Garak asked. The name sounded familiar and evoked an odd mildly happy-feeling memory. 

"That one'd be Earth. Basically, there were two continents with different ecosystems and economies and weaponries. Christopher Columbus was a total nutjob, but because he came in from what was pretty much a different world altogether, he managed to quickly kill off all the Taino Caribbean Native Americans because he had different, "better" weapons. That's us. Hopefully minus the 'nutjob' part."

"Quite." That wasn't happy at all, but the surrounding memory was lunch at the replimat. The memoryfeel was from Bashir practically bouncing in his seat from how happy he was at the time, and he'd mentioned "Columbus" as a mononymic. The words "Caribbean" and "Americas" had also been part of that conversation. Earlier that day, Bashir had made a huge breakthrough on a Bajoran disease, due to its similarities to something called...? 

"Didn't Columbus bring back some disease called Syphilis?" Garak asked.

"Er, yes." Kaleb said, frowning. "Okey, so we just avoid having sex with them." 

That was so weirdly jarring Garak wouldn't let himself finish the thought all the way. Awkward and utterly ridiculous. "Columbus" already couldn't be a happy memory anymore, and "hmm, I wonder how -that- happened" was just... oh never mind. 

"I'm going to go get tea," he said, and Kaleb gave a thumbs up from the top of a pushups arc. 

Over by the replicator, someone behind him started talking. "Dare I ask what -that- conversation about?" she asked, and when he turned around with the tea, she was half suppressing a giggle and half mirroring the squickish emotion he felt at the moment. 

Empaths. There was training to block telepaths from the earliest years of school on Cardassia. There weren't enough empathic species in the galaxy to make it part of normal training.

She ordered a chocolate milkshake out of the replicator and looked over to where Kaleb was doing Kaleb things: working out and studying history as fast as he could cram it into his head. He was currently listening to a program called "Basic Andorian History in 30 Minutes" at 2x the speed it was supposed to be played at, and was in the middle of even more pushups. 

In some ways, that wasn't a bad way to live. In public situations, it made him both come across as "brilliant" and extremely healthy, but in close quarters on a regular basis, the obsessiveness of it was a bit overbearing. 

She nodded over toward him. "-He's- here because he's happy about it. He's in his element." She locked eyes with him. "You're here in retaliation to something,"

Go. Away. Coming out of a terribly bizarre STD conversation is not a good time to be dealing with people who can sense your emotions. He shelved the ambivalence and redirected it. 

"I would think retaliation against an implacable foe like the Dominion is more than enough reason to be here. -You're- only here sharing our mission because for some reason someone decided to make -you- a main character in a book somewhere." 

She looked a bit offended. 

He put the cup down and pushed carefully constructed "good-natured" emotions toward her mentally. "I'm beginning to think the universe doesn't quite work the way we were taught in grade school, hmm?" 

"-You're- changing the subject on purpose." she said, giving him a too-knowing look. 

"On retaliation?" he said aloud as nonchalantly as possible, while trying to reconfigure some of the old Cardassian anti-telepathy techniques to work on emotions. 

He redirected again: "From what I've found out about Betazed, peaceful little cultures like yours don't know what a charmed sort of life you live until the age old art of mortal combat yanks it out from under you--and that's when people like me decide to "retaliate" and try to patch things up."

Troi put her milkshake cup back in the replicator. Her smile was almost patronizing now. "Mere martial retaliation wouldn't evoke the types of emotions you had when I walked in." she said."You felt strongly for one of them, didn't you?" 

In his head, he thought dryly: "if you were't plot-locked, I think I'd shoot you for that. I hate empaths." 

She stepped into his personal space and patted his shoulder. 

"Put some research in on whoever they were. Maybe you'll find it isn't as terribly awkward as you think it is." With that she walked off. 

There was no way research could make that conversation feel any less awkward. Ew? 

Although--researching "Bashir" wasn't a bad suggestion, not for anything a lovey-dovey Betazoid would understand. 

Tracking him early on in his life could show patterns of how the Founders build their Deep Cover scenarios. There might be particular organizations, schools, themes repeated across planets that had no reason to be there. 

And it would be a good excuse to drown out Kaleb's next audiofile: "T'Pesh and Tahken's Logical Explanations for Everything, episode 13: Ferengi Rules of Acquisition". Tahken's voice at 2x the speed was tolerable; T'Pesh was creepily tinny.

Digging around on what was available on the network uncovered references to trips to Adigeon Prime in Bashir's childhood. As a small boy, he'd left Earth with low grades and returned a star student. 

Tracking Adigeon Prime to other planets showed others. Officially, it was nothing but a cheap, child-centric vacation resort. Less officially, it was "genetic resequencing". The Federation made it illegal, so they were not very good at it and liable to mess up. Any inconsistencies between the original child and the literal "changeling" child could be chalked up to that--and being a child of someone wealthy enough to afford this would give them economic power. 

Adigeon Prime took in children from all across that area of space. Vulcan. Earth. Andoria. Ithenites. Tellerites. They'd have access to practically the entire Federation that way. 

He set up a list of what info was available on the network, a list of about 570 children sent there within the last 30 years and forwarded it to Kaleb to figure out how he wanted to throw his MC Minions at them. The less time he personally spent around the Betazoid the better. 

They'd been plugging through a settlement known to be a hub of information with the Protagonist "Away Team" down there when there was an explosion in Leonard Gabor's room. 

Garak checked the cameras. Leonard was still in his cell, Geordi was out cold on the ground and there was a Yridian dashing through the hallway toward them. 

They appeared in the doorway armed with a phaser. "I am Riz Nephtali and I demand that you put me back!" That was a female -voice-, anyway. 

Kaleb froze, staring at her. "Ew?" he said.

Garak hushed him. "She's Yridian. I can promise you you're likely -more- ugly to her than she is to you." 

Yridian. Explosion. Not enough info. Likely a Changeling.

"Cardassians? Don't you know that breaks many of our treaties?! I demand answers!" she yelled. 

"There's been a bit of a mix-up, our teleport operator is actually blind as a bat. You understand, right?" Garak said.

Kaleb looked at him like that somehow offended -Kaleb-. 

She swallowed visibly. "You put me back down there on my planet and we'll all be well and good. I run the place, you can't very well have me gone, they'll all get themselves killed or something."

"I do apologize considerably, but unfortunately we're waiting on authorization from down below. Who knows? Given their personalities, they might be trying to save you or something." He was glad being under orders from Picard was just a bluff here.

Watching her and her phaser, he stood up and went to the replicator. "May I interest you in something while we get this sorted out?"

"Yridian Brandy, but really I'd want Latinum for my time spent trapped up here."

She took the cup and held it, frowning at both of them. If she were a Changeling, she might not drink it. Then again, Odo'd learned to "bluff" that.

"Entertain her," he said to Kaleb.

"She's -disgusting-. What the hell am I supposed to talk about with her? It? Whatever." 

"I'm surprised at you. Don't you know anything about Yridian history?" Garak said. 

Kaleb frowned and thumbed down the list on his own screen. "Oh hey. I do know stuff." he stood up. "-Still gross-" he practically stage whisper hissed before turning around and putting on an act of good host. 

The video camera showed Geordi beaming in someone, a bipedal form that went brown Changeling goo and turned into a small electronic device. Leonard was yelling about "weres" again--and the device exploded at the right type of trajectory to fling particulates through that particular brand of energy field. The particulates then turned into a metallic rope that the energy field disliked more than the rope disliked the field, escaped, crafted a phaser, hit Geordi with it, and fled the room. Given his "Protagonist" status, if it wasn't on stun by her choice, something would have happened that -made- it on stun. Geordi'd be fine. 

Garak turned around, ready to fire on Riz Nephtali. 

"Yes I am an Amorphi," she was saying to Kaleb, beaming. "Now you see why -I'm- the one in charge down there."

Kaleb was still acting and it was a bit creepy. Even the phrasing of the words was a bit off.

"Madam we had -no idea-." he said. "Bearing in mind we're speaking through a translation device, 

'Where sands speak,  
And water talks,  
The air that sees,  
Chases 'bears' away,  
This we call Amorphi'?"

She nodded. "That's a song," she said, like that should be obvious. "A verse of it, anyway. And I'm assuming "bear" is a predator?" 

Kaleb's act broke long enough for him to flick a look at Garak "this thing -sings-?? ew??" before plopping his acting mask right back on and acting 100% interested.

She stood up and -sang-, performing the whole song in vaguely chromaic halftones and quarter tones and the whole thing sounded a bit culturebound. "Bear" was a word that didn't translate at all when she did it, and whatever type of sand it was had its own unique name that wasn't "sand". 

Judging by the song and her own reaction to it, prewarp Yridians believed in things that were like them, but could change and become other things as part of their innate culture. Many years ago, they'd found her, floating the universe like Odo had been. Whether she thought of herself as a "Yridian person who is also an Amorphi" or "Amorphi, benevolent scientifically-explainable legend of Yridians" was a bit unclear, but it was obvious she had no idea what Founders were. 

Elroy happened to hear her singing and came in, sitting there enjoying it. When she finished, he clapped. 

"And you are?" she asked. 

"God!" he said. "That hymn of praise was about me, wasn't it?"

Riz Nephtali sniffed at him like she was horribly offended, then changed her thought "What would you give me if I did praise you?" 

"Blessings!"

"I take latinum,"

And they chatted away a little too happily and she seemed to regard this adventure as an excellent business opportunity. She even flung a song at Elroy that was "praise" and he loved every second of it. On any deep analysis of the lyrics, they were likely sarcasm. 

Kaleb came back to the dashboard. "I can see why they never put a lot of music in this show. Yeesh. The only people in Star Trek who sing are Klingons... and not very well." He went on a tirade about the technicalities of Italian Opera versus Klingon Opera versus Chinese Opera and pitch and timbre and tonality. 

Watching the conversation between the Amorpi and Elroy though, he started to build a bit of a plan. A bigger plan than Kaleb's one-by-one nitpick. Something that might actually get them All The Founders Gone without having to spend eternity on it.

Something that might actually solve their problem and get rid of the Founders in one fell swoop. 

He got to work lining up all the little details.


	10. Chapter 10

GARAK: 

Several hours of testing theories and researching Elroy's abilities via Literature, Garak had a plan. 

Kaleb had a "Cliff Notes" version of the Christian God Book "Bible", which meant "book" in one of their root languages anyway.

Was "massive egotism" a typical trait of their world? Kaleb and Elroy both had it bad in different ways. 

Elroy was insane. Nonsensical rage over a situation about fruit -that Elroy himself had started!-. Killing off everyone by flood. Destroying a communications tower or something like that. Plagues. Famines. Ruining more buildings. 

Intense jealousy. Destroying people over the "wrong gods".

The Founders called themselves "Gods". Between what Riz Nephtali'd found out about him and what was in this "Bible", it was looking like this would be -easy-. 

Yet on that same list "have no other gods before me" there was also "don't bear false witness". Given that he'd apparently turned somebody into salt for looking at a city (!) that was a trifle concerning there. 

Ah well. There were work-arounds. Don't -bear- false witness. Truth in lies. Lies in truth. Planning, planning, planning. 

Done planning. Time for action.

BASHIR:

Alex stumbled into the infirmary. "Hai, can we puh Keedo inno an effin' medical coma for a bih?"

"Whatever for?!" 

Alex popped his neck and then pulled a computer screen out of nowhere. "Yeh see thaa numbar? Thaa's a big numbar. An' the beepin' is the Keedo Future Danger Warnin'. AGAIN. Aie'm tryyin' aa faine somewhar aa shunh this to an' ihs noh fukkin' workin!"

(Translation--> You see that number? That's a big number. And the beeping is the Keedo Warning. AGAIN. I'm trying to find somewhere to shunt this to and it's not fucking working!)

Bashir looked up and down the screen. The Keedo Danger Warning was going off again. Given how bad it had been last time that thing had gone off, with a smaller number, -this was bad-. 

"What do you mean "shunt it"?"

Alex went through a long, jargon-heavy explanation of Universe Wiring, trying to show him all the little details right there on the screen. Alex's universe was written in a Universe Code called "UC", Elroy's was "JC", and this universe was "ST". UC was time consuming to write, ST had more fluid barriers than the other two, JC was easiest to code in for new beginners. 

"Ih's why yeh haa warp. Warp doesn' work in UC or JC codin'." he slurred. 

"Wait, so you're saying all I'd need to make my own universe is knowledge of how to code this?" That... was disturbing. 

"Thaa an' a way aa geeah yerself time aa do ih." He leaned on one of the medical tables and looked at the ceiling. "Aie've taugh -how- many gods? Don' use JC though. IH SUCKS!" 

(Translation: that and a way to get yourself time to do it. I've taught -how many- gods? Don't use JC though. It sucks!!)

"I take you didn't write Keedo's universe then?" Bashir said. 

Alex shook his head, swishing the ponytail all the way to the ground. "Thaa was effed up before aie e'en goh thar. JC's easy aa wriee, easy aa ruin, -nasteh- for the BackDoorAccess." he ran the back of his hand across his face like a cat. "The BackDoor's a person." 

(Translation--> that was fucked up before I even got there. JC's easy to write, easy to ruin, nasty for the BackDoorAccess. The BackDoor's a person.)

Bashir remembered what a medical ruin Keedo was on an average day--and what sort of horrifying things had happened to him in the 2 hours Alex had been away. He also remembered the bit where somehow, he made a slightly better BackDoorAccess than Garak, whatever that meant. "Who would you be shunting it to?!" he demanded. 

"Thaa's jus' ih, thar's nowhere aa shunh ih to. Yar an ST univarse. The closes' yeh geh doesn' wark vary well an' would probably crash the Wormhole."

"You'd shunt it to the Wormhole?!l he cried. 

"Ih doesn' fih vary well, buh thar's a loh aa them, so maybe ih wouldn' be so bad?"

He flicked his hand by the screen in midair and got a keyboard, and from there, typed something in. "Sarch bar. Nothin'." 

File Found. 

File Not Found. 

File Found. 

File Not Found. 

File Found. 

File Not Found. 

"EH?!" Alex jammed his glasses higher on his face and thumbed down the results and there was an image on screen of a file being passed back and forth between two points. When it went one way, it was lit, when it went the other way, it wasn't. 

"EH!?" he said again. He licked his teeth and started rapid typing on the keyboard, searching for more information. 

"I'm going to go put Keedo under and do you mind if I call a meeting?" Bashir said.

Alex nodded, still staring at the screen. 

\----

GARAK: 

If the first part of the plan didn't work, if Elroy wasn't capable of it, the whole thing had been set up as a mere conversation about Riz Nephtali's cultural legends about Amorphi versus Elroy's bragging about being a God--and it would look like Garak was just along for the conversation. 

If it did work... if it did work, this entire Galaxy was going to look a LOT different. 

Totally worth it to self.   
Totally worth it to Cardassia.   
Totally how to "avenge" his 5 year false mental anchor. 

He set went in to where Elroy was, closing off the room and cutting the sound access. Again, if it worked, nobody could track him. If it didn't work... Alex could get this voice box to sing, but there were no guarantees on his end with it. 

He sat down and did his best to look chipper. 

"Riz Nephtali," he said. "Interesting person there." 

Elroy yawned. "I am more powerful than any Amorphi."

"I had noticed. Her legends mention nothing but the ability to shapeshift. Yours mention washing an entire planet barren of enemies." 

Elroy gave Garak an odd look. "I really wish I would have paid attention to the stories behind everybody I did pay attention to sitting through 4 hours of face paint for days on end." 

"Face paint?" he asked.

Elroy shrugged and put his feet up on the console, setting off the back engine scrubbers without knowing it. 

"Costume paint. Movies. TV shit. Stage makeup. Andrew Robinson was in a considerable number of movies as the bad guy. Psychotic. Crazy. Possessed. Do you really think -I'm- going to sit there and pay attention to the plot of something so dedicated to my enemies they named it Hellraiser?! Sure, he stayed married, had a nice kid, is generally a nice person." Elroy leaned back in the chair and watched the stars zipping by in the screen. "I think I'd stick him in Purgatory for a bit, Terrestrial Kingdom stuff." 

This was going to be harder than he thought. Elroy talked like he was off in his own world of info that only made sense in that context. Kaleb had mentioned their world being visual literature.

"Is our world a story on yours?" He had the disconcerting thought that Elroy might be discussing his -actor-. 

"Yes, and medammit, your entire Universe took far too many of my worshipers off with it with its "science". It's not even real science it's science fiction. Yes, let's put down seven billion people in time for the Apocalypse. Yes, let's have all of them somehow get born on the wrong side of the planet, and the ones on the right side all start recognizing James T Kirk over my son Jesus. THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. My world. MY rules. MY people. MY worshipers. Warp drive doesn't even WORK in my universe."

"That must be really frustrating," This guy was insane. The part where this conversation was probably going to fizzle out into nothing but banal worthless information seemed more and more likely. He tried the next bit of it: "I could probably find you some worshipers here," 

That got Elroy's feet off the dashboard and turned off the engine scrubbers. "I -really- should have paid attention to that show more. I don't think you were technically one of the good guys."

Given "Protagonist Centric Morality Mechanics" that was a little scarier than it should be. 

"Ah well, I've always thought 'good' was relative." he said.

He stood up, patted Elroy's chair, put his best "performance" face on and unleashed the next bit of the plan. 

\-----

BASHIR: 

They had the Senior Staff in the debriefing room within minutes.

"Aie'd say aie cannoah change the laws aa physics," Alex slurred, likely aware he was quoting someone, "Buh thaa seems aa be ezzacley whaa's goin' on. Ih should noah be flickin' on an' off." 

Jadzia looked it over. "Keedo said his Back Door Access had to do with the way his universe is 'wired', so if it's giving us weird feedback, maybe it's an issue with Shurikai." 

Alex popped his neck and looked a bit stimmy. "JC's a universe code. If yeh wrie in ih, ye can edit ih anytaime ye wann, provideh yeh don' muck ih up--an' ih's easy aa muck up. BackDoor on a code lavel's like a password. On a Universe render lavel, ih's a person, an'..." he flicked his tongue against his lip. "Ih -sucks- bein' thaa person." 

(Translation--> JC's a universe code. If you write in it, you can edit it anytime you want, provided you don't muck it up, and it's easy to muck up. BackDoor on a code level is like a password. On a Universe leve, it's a person, and it sucks being that person.)

He leaned back and looked over the numbers on his computer screen. "Given the numbers an' whaa aElroy is," He typed something in. 

"Thaa numbar is aElroy," he said, pointing in the vague direction of one of the points on the "File Found, File Not Found, File Found, File Not Found" image. 

"So who's that?" Bashir said.

Alex poked around with the computer for a little bit, then spun around and looked at everybody, stimming a little too hard trying to put uncomfortable thoughts into words. 

"Ih's all probabilih'ee raie now, buh depennin' on whar 'ee's aa whan whaaever ee's sehhin' up goes off, Garak may aa gone an' stuffed 'imsalf inno ih." 

(It's all probability right now, but depending on where he's at when whatever he's setting up goes off, Garak may have gone and stuffed himself into it.)

\----  
GARAK: 

Untrained or not, Alex had made this voicebox sing once, and given Elroy's lack of taste in music, nothing Garak did musically would be any worse than the Bible's King David, or any more "out of tune" than Riz Nephtali's quartertones. And he could mirror back exactly what Elroy'd just been saying, making it connect that much more. 

He started out somewhat tunelessly, using the hum of a fan attached to one of the dashboard computers to keep the guessnotes from going flat against each other. 

"You're stuck here,   
you're lonely here,   
this quadrant doesn't treat you   
the way you deserve,

Your own world is better,   
not much, but it's better.   
Kirk versus Jesus   
and those sorts of things."

Five notes in and it seemed to get through on a level that no amount of talking to this guy ever would. Elroy was actually -looking- at him instead of staring down his nose and flicking a disgusted glance every few seconds. And he wasn't rambling on about actors. Maybe his native language was literally musical?

Garak turned it up the fan a bit to hold the pitch. 

"The Federation ignores you,   
they don't understand you--" 

Neither do I, but I'm not telling you that.

"--You want your own world, your own rules,   
Worshipers singing your name." 

This. Was. Working. Notes were hard to invent on the spot, but Elroy was responding like a normal person now.

"You crave a million soldiers,   
You crave a million followers  
You crave a million people   
throwing themselves at your feet"

Elroy was humming along and Garak kept going, rather tunelessly. 

"I could show you million soldiers,   
I could show you a million followers,  
I could show you a million people  
All ready to worship at your feet," 

The weird deity was practically salivating. Now to ask for the favor.

\----  
BASHIR: 

"So Garak's turned himself into a BackDoor universe pass code?" Jadzia asked. 

Bashir dropped the data pad he'd been holding and the room unbearably cold suddenly.

"aElroy's shih when ih comes aa writin' code, so whoaver ih goes off on, it'll go off all Etaya Mou'un or Gathsemanie shih. I fuhhin hate JC!" he stood there rocking back and forth and glaring at the computer. "Keedo -qalifies- an' is written in the native code, so ih coul' go off on 'im, too." 

(Translation--> Elroy's shit when it comes to writing code, so whoever it goes off on, it'll go off all Etaya Mountain or Gethsemane shit. I fucking hate JC. Keedo qualifies, and is written the native code, so it could go off on him, too.) 

OBrien squirmed in his seat. "Er, um, permission to speak freely, um, sir?" He flicked between glancing at Sisko and Alex.

"If you're going to say something, say it!" Sisko said.

OBrien looked at Alex.

"Eh?" Alex leaned on the table, waiting for him.

OBrien looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. "Er, between the two of them, er, um, not that anybody does deserve this anyway at all, but uh, in terms of innocence between them, er... I mean if he started it, wouldn't he um... deserve it a bit more? If we only have just those two options, sir."

OBrien had no idea what he was suggesting, and Bashir knew he should be informing him of it, should be saying something, mentioning that here they had medical technology to handle it, and out there it would come in out of nowhere, no warning, nothing--but the mental battle to avoid imagining it took way too much attention. 

Everyone waited for a response from him and he had to force himself to remember air existed to inhale and then push out through the dense walls of horrific mental imagery flicking back and forth between... "Does that include the rape?" he asked very very quietly.

Alex quit rocking and nearly dropped to the ground in a pile before catching himself on the table and putting all his weight on his hands. "Is -thaa- whaa happened' thaa 'ee said noaa look into?" 

Oops. 

Alex pushed himself into more normal standing position and went into the little trance mode he'd tried to use to check on Keedo last time, then detranced and shook his head at a weird angle. "No, ih does noaa include thaa!" He licked his teeth and stared down at the table. "Thaa was jus' somebody bein' a tarrible person." 

"Ih's pain-wired. Yer geein' "file foun" whan ih's aElroy's perspeccive, 'cause aElroy was an ass an' used 'is kid as the BackDoorAccess. 'ee's stuffed inno 'Nabran Tain, an' since 'Nabran Tain's Garak's Dah..."

(Translation--> it's pain wired. You're getting "file found" when it's from Elroy's perspective, cause Elroy was an ass and used his kid aas the BackDoorAccess. He's stuffed into Enabran Tain, and since Enabran Tain's Garak's Dad...")

"WHAT?" Half the senior staff said. That wasn't common knowledge. That wasn't even -knowledge-. 

"Ye know whaa?" Alex was directing it at the little dot on the screen that represented Garak, "This is an emergency, sorreh." 

Back to the group: "The problem is 'ee doessn' qalify. Aie don' either. Wrong personalihy. Depennin' on whaa ezzacley aElroy's doin' with ih an' when ih goes off, aeither ih rouhtes through Keedo which sucks, ih rouhtes through aElroy's relationship angle, which sucks--"

(Translation--> the problem is, he doesn't qualify. I don't either. Wrong personality. Depending on what exactly Elroy's doing with it when it goes off, either it routes through Keedo, which sucks, it routes through Elroy's relationship angle, which sucks--)

Bashir gulped. 

"Or ih goes through 'im on 'is angle an' 'ee fuhhin' fries the universe." 

(Translation--> or it goes through him on his angle and he fucking fries the universe.) 

OBrien pshawed loud enough he probably sent spittle across the table. 

"You laugh, buh thar's this guy thaa 'as gotten Shurikai-stuffed inno bein' Garak so many times thar's a univarse whar they're both thar an 'ee's -pissed- aa 'im over ih. -Thaa- guy Shurikaied inno bein' a JC univarse's BackDoor an' crashed the univarse." 

(Translation--> You laugh, but there's this guy that has gotten Shurikai stuffed into being Garak so many times there's a universe where they're both there and he's pissed at him over it. That guy Shurikaied into being a JC universe's BackDoor and crashed the universe.) 

Everybody blinked. 

"Like trashin Syssem 32 on some things? Magnehs an' magnetih storage syssems??"

More blinks.

"Okey, ih's laike this:" he leaned on the table. "If the univarse is a space ship then JCs are the warp core. If yeh haa a warp core with dilithium, averything runs jus' faine. If yeh haa a Universe warp core thaa's suddenley full aa gasoline or somethin', IH ESSPLODES!" 

\---  
GARAK: 

Convincing Elroy to work his "magic", however that worked was easy. Hopefully Elroy could actually handle it on his end. 

"You've flooded worlds,   
You've torn down towers,   
Cast a plague on the enemy,  
Split the seas and burned down cities,  
All it takes is a word from you," Garak sang. 

"Show me soldiers   
Show me followers  
Show me a million   
people at my feet!" Elroy sang back.

"Rescue them from their false gods,  
Rescue them from their false beliefs,  
Give yourself an empire to rule on,  
Give yourself worshipers who sing," 

Can JemHadar sing? Is it "false witness" if you have no idea either way? Elroy didn't notice. He belted his bit out in a full blown baritone. 

"GIVE TO ME A MILLION SOLDIERS  
GIVE TO ME A MILLION FOLLOWERS  
GIVE TO ME A MILLION PEOPLE  
WILLING TO WORSHIP AT MY FEET."

"You've seen the Changelings," Garak sang. 

"I've seen the Changelings," Elroy sang back. 

"You've seen the Founders, he added a hand flourish. 

"I've seen the Founders," Elroy mirrored it. 

"They call themselves Gods,"

"They are not Gods," Elroy stood up like this was a musical. Garak funneled all his convincing techniques into this, locked eyes with him. "Find them," He held the last note out and they were close enough Elroy smelled weird. 

"I'll find them," Elroy put his long note on top of his, then stepped away from him and started to chant.   
\----

BASHIR: 

The beeping got more frantic and the File Found File Not Found signal batted back and forth faster and faster. 

"I remember you'd said I qualify," Bashir said.

"I do noah condone thaa!" Alex looked horrified. "An' noh really. Thaa's laike askin' if Arth or Romulus is closer aa Cardassia. Arth, technically, buh if ye are goin' on a -tricycle- ih's a beea a moot point!" 

(Translation: I do not condone that! And not really. That's like asking if Earth or Romulus is closer to Cardassia. Earth, technically, but if you're going on a tricycle, it's a bit of a moot point!) 

beep beep beep beep

Sisko was in his own Rage Twitchy Mode: "What are the chances of the universe exploding?" 

"Rough data? One in 3. Kinna." 

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP 

"So WHAT do you suggest we DO?!" Sisko roared. 

"If ih was my univarse, freeze taime an' make an effigy aa shunh ih through. You haa Qs. If aie knew duration, aie'd shunh ih through the Wormhole. Ih's laike high voltage, low amperage if ih's short."

(Translation: if it was my universe, freeze time and make an effigy to shunt it through. You have Qs. If I knew the duration, I'd shunt it through the Wormhole. It's like high voltage, low amperage if it's short.)

"I'm..." Sisko gulped. "I'm the Emissary, it wouldn't ruin the wormhole." 

Alex popped all the way down his spine. "aie think ye'd burn laike anthracite?" he said. "Naice aidea, wrong fuel," (I think you'd burn like anthracite (coal). Nice idea, wrong fuel.)

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP

Bashir grabbed Alex by the sleeve and turned him around. "There's a 33% percent chance it could fry the universe. There's a 33% percent chance it could hit my friend. Then there's a 33% chance it might hit one of my patients. You said it was high voltage, low amperage if it was short. I've got the most stake in this anyway." 

"Aie do noah condone this dammat," 

"I'm asking it as a favor," Bashir said. They were standing as close as they had been on stage when somehow Alex had thought it was a good idea to pull him up there.

Alex twitched and a big yellow button appeared on the floating computer screen. "Yeh know aie'm a sycophant, raie?" He sat on the table. "Aie still don' condone this!" 

Bashir looked at the button, swallowed once--and whacked it.  
\----  
GARAK: 

"BY THE POWER OF CHRIST I WILL FIND YOU!" Elroy yelled. 

With an insanely bright flash of light, space outside jumped to a brownish planet in an area of the Gamma Quadrant the computer was still trying to find and didn't recognize. 

They'd found it. The Founder's "capital", their new "Great Link". Back when they'd known where it was, Garak tried to destroy it then and Worf blocked him. Then the Great Link had changed planets.   
\----  
BASHIR:

Back on DS9, the Keedo alarm quit beeping and everyone looked at Bashir. Nothing happened for a moment, and then a single wrenching spasm of pain wracked through him and he leaned on the table. So far, the worst thing he'd ever felt was getting hit in the wrong places in training, and this wasn't that bad. High voltage, low amperage?  
\----  
GARAK: 

The stealth ship Okomfo rocked as Jem Hadar fired on them and Kaleb was signaling through the communicator.

"BY THE POWER OF CHRIST I DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!" Elroy commanded to the ship on the viewscreen, raising his hand up and the ship burst into a blast of bright red and fizzled out. 

Something else fired on them. "BY THE POWER OF CHRIST I DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!" Elroy yelled, and the next little ship burst into flames.   
\----  
BASHIR: 

Then there were tiny blips of phantom pain flicking through his shoulders and down his wrists that came out of nowhere and were gone just as quickly.

He looked up at Alex, but Alex was looking at the number in the top bit of the screen and running his tongue across the side of his lip over and over. 

That number hadn't changed yet. Bashir cringed.   
\----  
GARAK: 

The little planet scanner showed a small island they could technically teleport down to. Garak tapped it and the two of them were teleported down onto the island, looking out at a sea of swirling brown liquid sentience. 

Elroy's face looked happier than Gul Dukat with a new Bajoran fetish. 

Trying to hold the pitch correctly with no fan sound to help, Garak chanted out: 

"They travel the stars,   
They lie to the nations,  
They spread themselves thin,  
Destroy them here, destroy them afar."

They had to take out -all- the Founders. 

Elroy turned in on himself, focusing his chanting inward for a moment. 

Then he lit up bright white, and raised his hand over the sea of Founders and their "Great Link". 

"I DETERMINE THE NUMBER OF STARS AND CALL THEM EACH BY NAME. BY THE POWER OF CHRIST I SAID LET THERE BE LIGHT--"

The whole sea other than right where they were standing lit up bright white everywhere with only a tiny strip of brown visible right up against the ground. 

"AND I SAID LET THERE BE SORROW--" The strip started to bubble and try to turn into things that were boiled out.

"AND I SAID LET THERE BE PAIN--" The bubbling got worse and things started to emit shrill squeals as it vaporized. 

This. was. WORKING.  
\-----  
BASHIR: 

The number changed, and Bashir dropped to the ground. Balance gone, strength gone, nothing registered as -existing- other than liquid agony.

It was as if something had tuned every neuron in the entire nervous system to exchange their daily duties for pain of all its varieties.

Fire. Pressure. Cutting. Breaking. Deep, terror inducing pain ripping through his torso. Pinpricking surface pain like dull needles ramming through the skin. Crushed bones. Burned flesh. All of it. 

He was blind here, the optic nerves registering nothing but a migraine-level throb shooting back through both eyes to the back of his skull. If he was screaming he was deaf to it through the crushing force tearing down his ear canals. Sound exchanged for torture. Tactile sense exchanged for what felt like flaying and acid. Sight gone. Presence relative to the rest of the room gone. 

Then there was a single sound in it all: "Fuh ih," and it all stopped abruptly, with the room completely silent. Not even the ambient hum of the station or the barely-there sound anyone's breathing except his own. 

He'd ended up under the table, the nightmare-inducing pain replaced by mildly aching muscles as they slowly relaxed from being flexed with tension. Natural endorphins made his movements feel a little too light and a little too weird around the edges. He'd ended up under the table and the whole thing was rather humiliating. 

"Not you too!!" said a voice and the floor creaking so loud in the empty silence it seemed to echo. 

Bashir moved to get out from under the table and the entire Senior Staff was all right there. They'd been in process of running to try helping him, but now they were locked in rigid poses, some of which broke physics. OBrien shouldn't be able to hover 5 inches off the floor midstride. 

The lights in the room seemed a bit off from what they should be, and through one of the small windows, the wormhole sat locked like a still photograph halfway through the process of opening or closing. 

Alex wasn't locked in place. He was still moving like always, the normally quiet and unnoticeable sounds of the rustling hair on the clothes and the leaning on the furniture bouncing off the walls--and there was someone else in the room, in a Star Fleet uniform. He looked sort of like a Bajoran Bashir had seen once... Q??

Q continued: "I already have one 'deity' imposing his will on my universe willy-nilly. You were just scanning up until this point, and now you've gone and stopped all the electrons from moving. Somehow?"

"AIE DO NOAA FUHHIN' CONDONE THIS DAMMAT!" Alex yelled, flicking his hand wildly in Bashir's general direction. "Yeh wanna be invasive? BE INVASIVE. Aie'm goinna freeze taime, go ovar thar an ASK 'IM WHAT THE BLOODEH FUH EE'S DOIN!" 

Q shrugged and walked over to the computer screen and read the numbers. "It -was- almost done you know."

"Aie don' fuhhin' care," Alex half-sat on the table. "Aie fuhhin' hate JC. This sucks. Ih's makin' me crazeh." 

He stood back up, summoned a piece of paper out of air and wrote a note on it, leaving it on the table, then limped for the doorway and looked down at Bashir sitting up under the table. "Yeh commin or am aie goin' by maiesalf?" he asked. 

Bashir flicked a glance at Q and Q rolled his eyes. "You two may or may not have both kept the universe from imploding. I think I hate his atrocious "Jay See" code just as much as Alex does." 

"Ih's noah mine!" Alex protested. "An' aiem' keepin this shih frozen for a bih. Yeh jus... aie anno, chill or somethin'." 

Q shrugged and gave Sisko's time-frozen body an eerily gleeful look. 

"Do you think it's safe to leave them with him?" Bashir asked. 

Alex stumbled back and tossed Q something. "EERE!" he said. "Watch thaa." He looked around at the Senior Staff and splash-teleported them out to somewhere. 

Q frowned and turned on the device. The graphics looked drawn and the would-be-chipper theme music was surreal when it was the -only- sound reverberating through the frozen-time silent halls.

"Oh come on, what -is- this?" Q said, tapping the padd with the back of his hand.

"Try ih, you'll laike ih, yer a Brony in mose univarses annieway." 

They Alex-splash teleported the two of them to one the roundabouts. The Senior Staff was in the back of the roundabout still locked in the exact same positions they had been. 

They manually drove it to the wormhole, Alex rerouted the much smaller quantity JC code through the wormhole to open it the rest of the way in frozen time, they drove through it, and then plodded along through eerily frozen time, tracking numbers representing Elroy's code commands out through nonmoving space, with the still-frozen Senior Staff in back. 

From Bashir's perspective, it felt like many hours, and he had to keep reminding himself that nobody else was experiencing this. They'd all wake up expecting the table to be right there. It did give him a chance to nap and recover though. What -damage- there was was all stress related. The torment hadn't actually done anything to him.

"How did you find out out about JC?" Bashir finally bothered to ask. 

"Maie firss fuhhin' univarse was written in ih 'cause aElroy didnn' bother aa taell me other shih ezzisted. Aie haa a sisser. She wenn crazy. No more fuhhin' JC." 

"Oh." 

After what felt like possibly -days- if it wasn't for the part where the clocks didn't move, they pulled up to a planet beaming with light bright enough to render it a star all on its own, with multiple Jem Hadar and Vorta ships coasting around it and a single, high-end, partially disguised Cardassian steath-type ship above it. 

Bashir looked at it on the scans. It didn't radiate any unusual infrared, just visual spectrum white. 

"That's unusual," he asked. 

Alex licked his teeth. "Super brighe light is aElroy's motif. Laike me an' water." 

And now Elroy had made a planet glow. Uh oh?

Alex unfroze time and a few seconds later, the light winked out and it was back to being just a planet. The next thing on Bashir's list was explaining the sudden change of location to the Senior Staff!

\-----  
GARAK: 

What Kaleb said about "compare worlds, they might give you syphilis, but you destroyed their world completely" was apparently accurate. 

"I AM THE LORD THY GOD THE ALMIGHTY, this is my world now," Elroy belted out and then the light wall around them vanished to reveal miles and miles and miles of nothing but dirt going out in all directions. 

Elroy stood there grinning like the maniac he was. "This is mine, it's mine, it's mine. I didn't muck up the BackDoor here. The BackDoor's actually pretty stable here. I like the BackDoor here. I can USE the BackDoor here. I didn't break the BackDoor here."

Garak tapped the communications and checked to see if Riz Nephtali was still alive. She was the right species, wrong culture, and Elroy seemed to like her. 

She responded. Which meant Odo might possibly still be alive, too. -That- was nice. 

And that they had a last single Founder to command the Jem Hadar and Vorta with if the last bit of this worked.

It might not, but if it didn't, he phrased it like it was just a passing mention. 

"Bravo, you were -amazing-, just as Omnipotent and Omniscient as the songs say. Did you really wipe out all of the Changelings who are politically Founders?"

Elroy's face curled up in glee. "YEP! All their subjects belong to me now!"

Garak flicked a glance at him and tried to look as nonchalant as possible. "And to think you did -all that- with nothing but the simple phrase--" he pushed intent into this: "By the power of Christ I compel thee?"  
\---  
BASHIR: 

An unexpected flick of pain jolted across his hand, like bumping his thumb against a door. "Ow!" he stuck the tip of his thumb in his mouth even though that was unhygienic. 

"Aiem' turnin' thaa -off-." Alex slurred. "Noh sure howwa shunh ih anniewhar, buh Ih. Is. Goin'. OFF. The bigass number's gone now annieway. YEH KILLED AVERYBODY WITH IH!" he yelled, facing the planet for the last part.

(Translation: I'm turning that off. Not sure how to shunt it anywhere, but it. is. going. off. The bigass number's gone now anyway. YOU KILLED EVERYBODY WITH IT!")

\----  
GARAK: 

A bright white light darted down from the sky and hit Elroy--and then Garak he was standing on a desert island on a stripped bare planet face to face with -Enabran Tain-. 

"Garak?!" the man said. He looked down at his clothes and touched his face and then looked out at the barren dirt nothing shooting out in all directions. "Where... are we?"

"Oh, I don't know, going for a stroll in Lakat City?" That wasn't nearly quippy enough, but he was too weirded out to come up with something better.

"I just had the most bizarre experience. Maybe it was a dream? Big round columns, lots of fog on the ground, weird people." He leaned in. "And you want to know what?" 

"Do I?"

"-He's- a God, and he doesn't approve of gay people either." 

"THAT'S ALL YOU CAN SAY TO ME? I take out the entire Dominion and all you can say is "he doesn't like gay people either?" You know what? We're not having this conversation." 

"You took out the Dominion??!" Enabran Tain yelled.

Garak looked at him, annoyed. What to do with -this- new turn of events? On the one hand, it was great that he was rescued, on the other hand, why was he -here-? To give himself space to think, and there was a quiet splash sound and Alex and the entire Senior Staff of DS9 appeared a couple dozen feet away.

Sisko. Jadzia. Kira. Odo. OBrien.

Bashir.


	11. Chapter 11

ALEX: 

The Senior Staff went from being right by Bashir and freaking out (understandably so! Alex was just as freaked out!) to being stacked in the back of the runabout like a bunch of life size Star Trek lawn ornaments.

He'd put them in there by order of "who'd fit comfortably in the allotted space" not "projected trajectory" and when he unfroze time, they ended up in an awkward pile. 

"Sorreh," he said. Bashir was explaining the situation as best he understood it. 

Alex checked to see if they had space down there to teleport safely--and ran into an interesting problem. They have -all- the space in the world to teleport safely, and there would be absolutely nothing to lean on comfortably should the need arise.

He teleported them down anyway. 

Enabran Tain was on a short little hill in the flat expanse of dirt, snipping at Garak over something or other and Garak was ignoring him and walking away from him.

On sight of the hundred of miles of dirt expanse going everywhere, Odo was utterly traumatized, a few moments of staring at it in horror, and then dropping down and crying in grief. Kira crouched down next to him and hugged him. Maybe he should have left Odo up there on the runabout. Oops. 

Sisko was yelling at Garak. Jadzia was flicking her eyes back and forth between the two, likely to be able to move quickly when and if Sisko decided to do something violent. 

Garak didn't seem to notice any of them. Like Sisko's rage wasn't even part of the equation, he cautiously approached Bashir, seeming to be trying to decide if it was a good idea to poke him with a stick to see if he was real or not, but there was no stick to be had. 

Yes, Alex should have just bothered Q days ago. They'd basically had a "Garak with vicarious deity powers" on the loose and this is what he'd gone and done with it. 

"Aie cannoah leave -yeh- alone for ten minnihs aiether apparently," Alex slurred, not expecting Garak to notice him.

A flash of resolution flicked across Garak's face and he took two very quick steps toward the doctor, put his hand on Bashir's shoulder and whacked his com badge, stating a teleport code that wasn't in any Cardassian standard handbook. And they were both gone. 

Sisko darted forward and tried to take a swing at the space that was now empty after the teleport. 

"Can yeh quih hihhin' things for one episode?" Alex said. He was leaning a bit far to the right and his fingertips found something to push back upright against without looking away from Sisko. 

Sisko looked up at Alex like he was debating on taking a swing at him now, too. 'll that’s be fun, getting to play "Dodge the Sisko " without making either of them look like idiots. 

Sisko had more self control than that. "He killed off all the Founders!!" he yelled, almost twitching in rage. 

Alex started tipping sideways again and pushed off whatever was there, still watching Sisko. Was it possible to "fix" what Elroy'd done? He had the frozen time duration of 5 seasons of My Little Pony to entertain Q with, and with frozen time and rewinding time--and a lot of copy-paste--technically, the were put-back-able. Annoying. Difficult. But doable. 

Not that it was a good idea by any stretch of the word, but technically -doable-. 

Alex tipped sideways and pushed off whatever was there to stand back up straight again, locking eyes on Sisko. "Yeh wann them all back thaen?" he slurred. 

Sisko stepped back and looked out at the vast expanse of dirt. Jadzia gave him a look like she was worried he'd go through with the idea. 

Giving Sisko the sense that he had some semblance of control over the situation would make it just like the "Pale Moonlight" episode, but on steroids.

"'ee won yar war for yeh," Alex slurred. "Pally vs Dominion is the wrong tactic. Rogue vs Dominion, Rogue wins." 

In "Pale Moonlight", it had taken Sisko a whole 45 minutes of monologing and flashbacks to be okay with rogue tactics. Hopefully it wouldn't take this long this time around, especially because it wasn't Sisko-initiated. 

The Commander's face seemed to be settling on recognition and understanding and he had switched from Attack Mode to standing there nodding and calculating what to do next. Alex tipped sideways again. Now that he didn't have to watch Sisko's every move, he could look at what he'd been leaning -on-.

Oh hai OBrien. You are not a wall.

Alex been pushing off the man's chest this entire time to keep from tipping over that direction and the guy had apparently just been letting him, all the while giving him freak-out face instead of saying something.

"Can we go somewhar with chairs okey?" Alex teleported them to the Cardassian ship Okomfo because it was a bit bigger and had better furniture. Then he stumbled over to the nearest table and propped himself up on it. There. Much better. 

\---

BASHIR: 

From his perspective, one minute he was trying to explain to Sisko and Jadzia how they got to the Gamma Quadrant, and the next they were standing on miles and miles and miles and miles of dirt under a ruddy sky. 

Enabran Tain was standing on a mound of dirt, looking about the same as he had back in the prison camp, and from the tracks in the dirt, Garak had been walking away from him. 

Sisko was talking. Garak was ignoring him. Enabran Tain was talking and Garak was ignoring him to. Jadzia was staring at him, OBrien was staring at him, Odo was visibly freaking out about the empty planet and Kira was yelling at Garak over that and Garak was ignoring that too. 

All he did was stand there staring at Bashir, mouth open and seeming to be debating on poking him.

Bashir couldn't figure out whether to berate him first for the still mind-numbingly-huge "Do you have any idea what just do to the galaxy!?" or the "Do you have any idea how much that -hurt- you little....!?" 

He got as far as "Do you have--" without knowing which way he was going to end this sentence when Garak darted forward, grabbed his wrist and whacked his com badge--"Leonard 2"--and they were both teleporting in a Cardassian teleport beam, all without Garak ever looking away from him. He still had the jaw-dropped, barely-blinking gaze through the red teleport swirl. 

"I MUST FEAST ON THE BLOOD OF THE--" screamed a highly anemic and possibly Vitamin A deficient Cardassian who was running right for him as soon as he materialized. 

Garak whacked a button on the column next to him and and the other person ran right into an energy wall. 

Keeping track of what other people were thinking wasn't Bashir's strong suit. But the more he picked it apart, watching Garak sort of just stand there--wordlessly, which was disturbing coming from him--this was a big deal and it had something to do with him specifically. 

AND Alex said Garak was gay. 

AND there was the utter believability of the holodeck song (other than the electrical loud music aspect). Bashir looked down as if he thought he'd see the planet through the floor of the spacecraft they were on. 

Everything seemed to kind of sort of point to but not really...

HAD GARAK JUST FIGURED OUT HOW TO STOP THE ENTIRE DOMINION BECAUSE OF -HIM-?? 

"Well I may have overreacted a bit," Garak said, turning away from the electrical wall and him and feigning a headache. 

"OVERREACTED!?" Bashir yelled, "To -what-?"

"When was the last time we had lunch?" Garak asked, not answering the question. Of course. 

Keedo had been right. Garak was the -wrong- person to accidentally forget to debrief about the situation with the Dominion Prison Camp. 

"Over a month ago, the day I went to the burn treatment conference on Meezan IX." Bashir said. "Then I was stuck in a Dominion Prison Camp." 

Garak seemed to want to touch him again and didn't quite dare. "That was really quite recent relative to what I thought had happened. You'd think I would have had the wherewithal to notice something was off, especially -that- recently!"

"What did you think had happened?!" 

"I thought they'd decided to take the term "Changeling" literally and I'd befriended a complete fantasy."

"You took out the entire Dominion over that?!" Overreacting was exactly the right word. 

Garak didn't look at him, pretending the little column on the wall he was running his finger down had all his attention. "That and the opportunity did present itself very nicely. There's a little phrase, 'by the power of Christ--"

"DON'T mess with that!" Bashir said, cringing. Alex had said he was -going- to shut it off but not that he -had- shut it off. "I'm a little too familiar with the horrific side effects of that little incantation." He shuddered remembering how bad it had been.

He looked up to see Garak right there in front of him, apprehensive. "I wasn't aware of any side effects?" he said. 

Bashir was searching for some way to explain this when he wasn't sure how it worked anyway. Directly quoting Alex's bizarre "gasoline" tirade would likely create more questions than it answered, and the frequent-and-accurate "ih sucks" was very unspecific and highly colloquial anyway. 

From the other room, a splash sound, and then a female voice in the other room: 

"Don't move, I've got a phaser on you. I am the Head of the Secretary of the Department of Defense and you're all... that is a -lot- of genitives. Why is it Secretary? How is 'secretary' even remotely a quality thing to be? I pay my pilots better than I pay my secretaries. You better not be-"

"Just...what?" Male voice. "Never mind. Point is, you're in charge of the military. We'll work out titles later. Anyhoo, DS Niners, we have you surrounded. Why are you here anyway?"

"Aie laiked yer table." Well that was obviously Alex. 

"You what?" the woman said. 

Back in the room with the energy wall, Bashir put his hand on Garak's shoulder. "I'll explain later. Just -don't- use it anymore."

Garak nodded, looking a bit baffled, and they went into the other room. 

The DS9 Senior Staff was all on the side of the room closest to them, Alex was half-sitting against said table--where a vaguely familiar Star Fleet Lieutenant Commander had been eating breakfast and now had a spoon dangling halfway out his mouth, gawking at Alex. 

Down one whole wall, several dozen papers taped to the wall with thick scrawl on all of the, and on the far side of the room over by the controls, Gul Kaleb and the owner of the female voice. She was a pinkish Yridian with metal jewelry and a prim and proper accent. Compared to Odo, she didn't seem that "changeling looking", but compared to other Yridians, she probably did. She also had a dangerous looking illegal phaser of some kind, aimed at the Senior Staff.

Garak glanced around at everyone a few times, and then snapped into a mode like he'd had the whole thing planned. 

"Oh do put that down, Riz," he said chipperly, walking out into the rest of the room. "The man you're aiming that at is going to be -the- person in charge of watching our little gateway back to the Alpha Quadrant and as part of the biggest Cardassian takeover in the history of," he paused, looking at the paper printed-out map -taped- to the wall, "Well, -forever-, we're going to need to be on very very good terms with them."

Garak now owned the Gamma Quadrant. 

Bashir bit his lip, thinking: 

"That--

That just--

That was all kinds of overreacting."

And the worst bit was other than a quick gesture in Sisko's direction at the beginning, the rest of the glances about staying on good terns were aimed at -him-.

The dreadful phrase "I'm a doctor not a galactic domination specialist..." poked its head up in the back of his mind and he pushed it down. There was -no way- Garak was going to be able to get away with this, right? 

The Yridian lifted her gun up and it Changeling-morphed back into her hand. "Tell -him- I'm not a -Secretary- of anything. High Grand Manager maybe, -not- a Secretary." she said, flicking her hand in Kaleb's direction. 

Kaleb rolled his eyes. "It's just a temporary title. We can change it. I have had about 15 minutes to put -any- research into this shit? Goodmorning Sisko of the Panama Canal..." That last bit seemed to be to himself. 

Alex shoved off the table and stumbled over to the wall, looking at the map. "Thaa parr's wrong, thaa parr's off a bih, thaa par' wenn supernova, those people are -weird-,--" 

He slid his hand across the (paper!) map and it shifted over a bit, clarified borders, showed things it hadn't before, including an encroaching Borg area on the far right side of the page.

"If you don't mind me asking," Garak said, "Who's side are -you- on?"

"Averybody's? Aie yanno?" He gave the two of them the most awkward look ever and flicked his tongue across his tooth, humming a tune for a few seconds and sort of shifting to it, sending the ponytail rippling. 

(Translation: "Everybody's? I dunno." Can't decide if the song is the same one from the Holodeck Karaoke or the "I ship it" song...)

The Lieutenant Officer took the opportunity of Alex not being right there to get up from the table, leaving the half-eaten breakfast there, and go stand by the DS9 team. "Hi, the rest of my crew's on Riz Nephtali's home world, I was working teleport and then everything went really bright, and now we're out here--what species is that?!" He pointed to Alex.

"Dalco," Alex popped his neck. "Aie prolly look laike whack on thaa thing." 

Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge! That was who that was, with the Visor that saw on more of the electromagnetic spectrum than human eyes.

"Mr Alex, if you're on 'everybody's side'," Sisko said, "I suggest we figure out a good way for you to splash us back to the Alpha Quadrant and we can figure -all- of this out. The Cardassian government and the Yridian government--"

"It's more of a league, really," the Yridian (changeling!) apparently named Riz Nephtali interrupted,

"--would really like to know about this new turn of events." Sisko finished. 

Alex leaned on the wall. "Two seconds, see how the Brony turned out." 

Bashir stifled a giggle, then realized he was the only other person in the room that had any idea what that meant, and even then, not really. 

And they were all on Deep Space Nine.

Alex sprawled against the banister. "Aie prolley shouldda done this on Cardassia, buh aie ran ouhha episodes an' had aa go back an' geea Tain annieway."

Riz Nephtali glided over to him. "We have a massive army of things that only listen to my species!!" she cried. "What are we going to do about them!?"

Alex spread his fingers and blue Changeling go appeared between them. "We good," he yawned. "Aie've taken over Gamma Qadrannts before." 

Sisko looked appropriately horrified. 

\----  
GARAK: 

The next several days were nonstop busy from waking to sleep and a lot of caffeine in between as he now had to juggle Cardassia's rather corrupt government with the Federation AND the Romulans AND the Klingons AND the Breen AND coalitions and agreement tribes from the Gamma Quadrant. 

The part where Alex and Keedo, the person who was Ziyal's switchout, knew the Gamma Quadrant well was helpful. 

Interacting with Alex was an experience in Uncanny Valley. The floor length blue hair was just plain bizarre, Alex had actual metal and glass glasses instead of medical implants, and Bashir had given Garak a long medical analysis of the movement disorders. Without the "universe coding" abilities, someone with that many medical quirks would be in quite a bit of trouble on Cardassia. Bashir called the man's movements all kinds of medical names. "Stimming", "overcompensation for dysfunctional trapezius muscle", "non neurotypicality".

Actually talking to him though, Alex was about as "weird normal" relative to normal Cardassia as Riz Nephtali was "weird normal" to Yridians. Multi-dimensional traveler who happened to have stumbled onto Cardassia long ago and stayed for the kanar. 

The part where Keedo and Kaleb had to be carefully passed between different meetings and never meeting was a bit more tricky; puppetting Kaleb into doing things was the only way to take any breaks! 

He stuffed the Gul (was he still only "Gul" given that they now owned a quarter of the galaxy?) into sitting in on a meeting Keedo wouldn't be in and ducked out, timing it to find the doctor at the Replimat at the same time "accidentally". 

He ordered the usual, just like everything was normal and it went right to the little account still attached to the tailor shop and found Bashir sitting at the usual spot. 

"Korganka pudding for breakfast?" he said. "Really doctor, I didn't know you had that much of a sweet tooth?"

Bashir gave him a look like he would have dropped the pudding if it wasn't already sitting on the table. 

"You own half the known galaxy and you're in here commenting on Korganka pudding!?" he cried. 

Garak tried to look as nonthreatening and self-depreciating as possible, "Even despots have to eat," he said, smiling. "May I?" he said, gesturing to the chair just like they'd done over a hundred times before and Bashir barely nodded, just like they had a hundred times before, and he stirred the tea, just like a hundred times before. 

"Every single move I've been making has been galactic news and I've had more than enough conversations about me lately." he said. "What have -you- been up to?" 

Bashir looked like he was trying to decide if he should scold him over the events in the Gamma Quadrant obviously not being Federation Kosher or yell at him for having overreacted to begin with or yell at him for being here on the Replimat in the first place. 

Finally he took another bite of pudding and pretended this was just a normal day too: 

"Well, I get back from the whole Gamma Quadrant adventure and I've got a Dr Zimmerman wanting to use -me- as a template for the next EMH, only this time, they're wanting an -L- MH. Long term medical hologram." 

"So they'd be using you to replace yourself and every other doctor throughout the Federation?"

"Well, erm, that point has been brought up before, but there are many situations where a holo-doctor could be more beneficial than a humanoid. Research outposts, subspace communication stations, long-range exploratory vessels..." he frowned and went back to his pudding. 

"If they do decide to do something like that," he said. "Didn't you once say the stars seemed a little brighter in the Gamma Quadrant? Once you get your LMH program written and I get the government negotiations ironed out, there's a whole quadrant full of "frontier medicine" waiting for you."

Bashir's eyebrows went way, way up, like he'd never thought of it before. "But, um, but, I, er, what about Starfleet?! I have Starfleet to... don't I?" 

His com beeped and he whacked it, still staring like he had no idea what to do with the invitation and was very grateful for the interruption. 

Jadzia's voice: "I have an Amsha and a Richard here to see you?"

Bashir practically blanched and he stood up. Whether he meant to aim for Garak's hand or the table to steady himself Garak had no idea, but with a "I might have to take you up on that!!" he brushed against Garak's hand and darted out of the Replimat.

Kaleb's meeting would go for another twenty minutes, so Garak took the minute to actually enjoy food for once. Not one of the people he'd been working with closely ate like normal people. Changelings didn't eat. Kaleb had a schedule. The Delco never seemed to notice that meal time existed, and Keedo hid whatever it was he ate. 

It wasn't 20 minutes with Bashir, but it was 20 minutes with a decent meal. 

Amsha and Richard.

They were Bashir's parents.

Which he knew from the file about the Adigeon Prime. 

Bashir was still technically "fake". 

They'd just legitimately genetically altered him instead of it being a base for Founder operations. 

All the food tasted disgusting now and it took a massive amount of self control not to fling it across the room.


	12. Chapter 12

BASHIR:

He'd specifically told Dr Zimmerman NOT to bring his parents in on this and yet here they were. 

His father, embarrassing him in front of Sisko. His mom, smelling a bit overwhelming and making him feel like he was 6 1/2 again. 

He tried to duck out of Family Dinner with them--his friend had just taken over a Quadrant, which was a lovely excuse, but Garak was busy with other matters, Romulan negotiations and such. 

The contact attempt ended up putting him in an odd conversation with Gul Kaleb instead, about whether or not he himself still had "Protagonist Status" now that the Dominion war was over, since that ended the story in his literature. That was a bizarre thought, first that he was somehow an unwitting Protagonist somewhere, and that the story might be over! 

He escaped to the Infirmary for medical "emergencies" instead, and took too long on Ziyal's medical check up. The -actual- Ziyal, who'd come in via a portal on Cardassia (!?) and been switched out correctly with Keedo in Alex's "Warehouse".

"Did anybody get hurt doing it?" he asked.

"No?" The concept seemed completely foreign to her, which was a relief. "I got to pet a lot of things called Zarthans, and according to Keedo's Android Butler, I was stuck as a "Vampire" or "Theti" for a few days?" 

Vampires made no medical sense whatsoever, but looking over Keedo's information, "vampires" explained the man's hideous and slightly surreal medical condition better than anything else, but still--VAMPIRES!? A quick perusal through any information on the computer about "vampires" and it was all, like Kaleb said--LITERATURE. 

Dracula made absolutely zero medical sense whatsoever.

Ziyal was about to go into further detail when Sisko walked into the room. All it took was one glance at his face: the Federation knew about the genetic altering. 

The details were that his parents had been foolish enough to talk about it on the station in the first place, and instead of telling -him- they'd "never tell anybody", they told it to the Hologram LMH version of him instead. 

The worst bit was wandering through the Promenade and looking at all the little changes, such as where Garak's tailor shop being was under construction to become something completely different, the bar having an additional "karaoke" option, and the Bajorans all seeming terrified of what was going to be happening next through their Wormhole, the horribly awkward thought was "well that's it then, I think I've lost my Protagonist Status. I'm actually leaving the station." 

If someone would have told him when he'd come here 5 years ago that his "story" of coming here to Deep Space Nine looking for wild adventures in frontier medicine would end with him wandering off into the Gamma Quadrant with a (male!) Cardassian, he never would have believed them. 

On the other hand, given how Garak had been acting the very first time they'd met, how much of this was -planned- was up for debate, but it was certainly something the Cardassian -wanted-.

The man had practically gone off and taken down a whole nation over him. That was...flattering...if a bit disturbing. 

But what brought it on when it did was Garak thinking the Founders had made up him out of nothing, that he'd "befriended a complete fantasy".

A thought crossed his mind and everything went very cold all of a sudden.

Genetic alteration wasn't the same thing as being a Changeling--but how much of Garak needing him to be "real" might carry over to it?

He had to find him and hope he'd been too busy with the new takeover to find out about it second hand--and worse, hope it wouldn't ruin everything! 

Why was his story suddenly possibly a tragedy?!   
\-----  
GARAK: 

"Hey you, Bashir wants to talk to you," Gul Kaleb said over the communicator.

"I'm a trifle busy at the moment," Garak responded.

"The computer says you're heading for Quark's Bar," 

"I'm a trifle busy in Quark's Bar then," Garak said, and then shut off the com. 

Kanar wasn't a common go-to for him. The last time he'd felt bad enough to need it was the event with the Implant--and it had been Bashir who had saved him from it. 

"I thought you took over half the universe," Quark said when he walked in, giving him a look that was half befuddlement and half realization that he suddenly had a lot more buying power than the last time he'd been in here. Garak sort of wondered how much of Quark was "real" and how much of it was nothing but play acting for the rules of Customer Service. 

"My role in that may or may not have been exaggerated," he said. Quark had said -half- and it was only a quarter, and even then, only the galaxy, not the entire universe. "Kanar, please." 

"Things that have been way too powerful in this station: Cardassia, Federation, Dominion, -you-" Quark got out Garak's favorite kanar variant, "It's like I said. The more things change, the more they stay the same on this station."

Morn tipped his glass to that and nodded. How much of Morn was real? Lurians usually had hair... (DS9 6x12) He was probably overthinking this. 

Keedo came in, back to looking "human" or "theti" whatever his species was, still white, still tiny, not half Bajoran/half Cardassian. 

He was sitting on the other side of Morn and the two chattered on in small talk. And then Keedo had the horrible choice-of-phrase to throw in a reference to -Columbus- into the conversation, by way of "that's where Capitalism came to America and it kinda didn't end well on our side".

There would never be enough kanar to get rid of the Awkward that was that topic. Ever. That certainly put it in perspective though. 

The two options being "Bashir is a Founder who might have syphilis except not really because that is -insane- and not how this works anyway" versus "Bashir's parents mucked around with his genetics a bit and that's why he's smarter than OBrien and Sisko" made which option was better perfectly clear.

And Bashir -was- smarter than every human he'd ever come across. 

Maybe it wasn't "you're fake, how dare you", maybe it was "out of the entire galaxy, there's billions of humans, and the Federation's made upgrades illegal--and lucky me, I GET THE ONLY ONE!

Did he though? Bashir had said "I might have to take you up on that" on an invite to the Gamma Quadrant, but that was under duress of parental interaction. Would the doctor really give up the whole Federation just for someone who, from his perspective, might still be nothing but a lunch friend?

Bashir walked into the bar right as Garak stood up to go find him. When he met him by the doorway--was he reading too much into this?--the doctor wrapped his hand around Garak's arm and looked like the whole Gamma Quadrant was weighing down on him. 

"I need to talk to you about something," he said. 

And then there was a loud noise and the room tossed itself sideways, all the lights going off. 

Quark was squeaking and for a few seconds, the only light in the room was a pair of lights that looked creepily like eyes, before the emergency lights went on. Everyone seemed more or less okay. 

Over the speakers "We cannot accept that Cardassia has the entire Quadrant". Infantry Romulans beamed in, blasting off at everything. They were standing close enough to an overturned table that Garak pulled Bashir down next to him. 

They were firing at mostly the ceiling, trying for intimidation. The very tiny Keedo was trying to shield the much larger Morn and ended up looking mostly ridiculous. Speaking much too quickly, Keedo patted Morn's shoulder. "Ihateusingthis. Itonlyworksongroups. Thisisembarrassing. Dontjudgeme!". He let go and stepped into the middle of the room.

"Cease. Fire." he commanded.

"Does he really think that's going to work?!" Garak whispered.

"Shh!" Bashir nudged him.

The Romulans all turned their guns on Keedo. 

"Cease. Fire." Keedo tried again--and this time, his voice picked up layers under it, like the translator wasn't quite working right. It echoed and bounced and returned whispers. 

There were layers of legitimate Romulan bouncing off the wall in that command, which Garak had learned under cover as a gardener. There were other languages, too. "No disparar" "La tatlaquu alnnar". Others. "Ampuch stamachki." "Bujab ohheesem." 

(OOC: credit to Dan Adler's conlang and Aaron Crow Simon's conlang from Facebook. Which is Lurian and which is Ferengi? I dunno.) 

And in that, there was Kardasi. Actual Kardasi, not just the slightly-off of the translator. Of course he hadn't been -planning- on shooting at anyone other than the Romulans, but under whatever telepathy Keedo was doing, there was the distinct feeling he might not be able to shoot anyone if he tried. 

"Drop your weapons," Keedo said, and the same effect again, the multiple languages, the layered sound.

And Morn started piling little weapons out on the table. One of the languages must have been Lurian. If Quark was responding, he was behind the bar and couldn't be seen. 

There were ways around telepathy commands, but it took Garak both seeing it affect Morn, who Keedo wasn't really trying to command, and also noticing he himself had obediently putting down three backup weapons and one of the phasers to finally get around to -using- any of those methods to fight it off. 

The Romulans were trained in fighting it too, but the main weapons were down and their attention was on struggling to fight the effect. 

Back in the normal monolinguistic voice, "Great, now what?" Keedo said to nobody. 

Someone dashed into the doorway, zipping around and in under a few seconds, took out the Romulans in a violent mass flurry of hand to hand combat that Worf would have had to applaud. 

"Zamiel?!" Keedo said, "You didn't just kill everybody did you?! They're -soldiers-." he stepped over one of the corpses in the dim emergency lights, frowning. "It's their -job-." 

The new person, "Zamiel", walked over to Keedo. "I didn't," he said. "Just knocked them out. Alex said they set off your Danger Alarm." 

"AGAIN?! I had everything under control, this time around anyway..." Keedo said, looking around. "I have Group Control powers."

And the two of them walked out of the room, with Zamiel starting a "yeah, but..." and not finishing it within ear shot. 

"You know, I wonder if when they built Terok Nor as a mining station, if anyone ever expected it would be the center of colliding worlds. First the Wormhole, then the Dominion through it, now colliding universes. I see the appeal of Kaleb's frenetic studying." Garak said. Keedo's telepathic command ability was unnerving.

The station shook and more objects fell off the shelves. 

"Not that the middle of the bar in the dark is a good place for this," Bashir said, "But if at all possible, I wanted you to hear this from me first," 

Hear what? In the dim light, Bashir looked positively ghastly, flicking glances at him, worried about something. 

"Did you hear anything recent about the events with the LMH and my parents and such?"

The station rocked again. "Not particularly, I've been a bit preoccupied," 

"I, um, well, back when I was six, I was small for my age, a bit awkward physically, not very bright. All I knew was that I was a great disappointment to my parents. I don't remember when they made the decision, but just before my seventh birthday we left Earth for a place called Adigeon Prime." 

The doctor knew him well enough to know this -was- a big deal for him. And now he was admitting it instead of hiding it. The snippet of the tune he'd thrown at Elroy flicked in the back of his mind: ""The Federation ignores you, they don't understand you--" He had Bashir like he'd had the power of Elroy, and this was much, much more preferable. 

"Oh -that-," Garak said. "I've known about that for awhile now," 

"-Garak-," Bashir said, almost as annoyed at him over it as Keedo'd been over Zamiel. "How did you...? Of course you did." 

Definitely not just lunch buddies anymore. If Bashir were from a slightly different culture and they weren't sitting at an awkward angle behind a table, the man might have hugged him. 

"And you're alright with that?! Given how much the the thought of my being a 'complete fantasy' affected everyone and it turns out I am exactly that: the fantasy of my parents!" 

Bashir'd trusted him with it, so he followed suit. "To be completely honest, it took some getting used to the concept and I'm glad I found out about it in the context I did. "Adigeon Prime, recruitment base of the Dominon for the whole Alpha Quadrant" being reduced to merely "Adigeon Prime, parents trying to do what's best for their children" is a relief, not a rude awakening, and anything's better than..." he caught that awkward little words "inter-dimensional syphilis" before it came out. Technically, it had never been a thing anyway! 

"Better than what?"

Should have caught it earlier. "Oh nothing, historical references Kaleb brought up about the whole situation between his universe and ours. If you're ever doing anything referencing anything to do with Columbus again--I don't want want to hear about it."

Bashir blinked, mulling it over and hopefully not picking up too much into it. 

Garak took both of Bashir's hands in his. "The Federation doesn't understand you, they have no idea what they're missing. There's a whole Gamma Quadrant out there for you," He looked into his Anchor's weirdly normal eyes, "Come with me,"

Bashir shifted his hands to be actively part of this and nodded. "I'm ready when you are," he said. 

BASHIR:

OF COURSE GARAK KNEW ABOUT THAT. GARAK KNEW EVERYTHING. At least he was also all right with it. If it wasn't in the dark, with the table at an odd angle, being attacked by Romulans which was partially both their faults, well--maybe that was the reason every romantic interaction he'd ever had with women had gone wrong. He'd had someone waiting for him the entire time RIGHT HERE. 

Bashir gave him a side glance in the dark. Leeta had dropped him for -Rom- of all people. Was that "plot" or was that somehow... HOW much did Garak know about everything? 

Then there was a sound of teleport and for a split second, Bashir was terrified the Romulans were taking Garak away, but it was standard Cardassian teleport. A few seconds later, it went off around him as well and he materialized to arrive on the Okomfo to see Garak and Riz going on about teleport protocols and how one should generally be -warned- before being teleported out of things!

Alex was sprawled out, half laying on the table, half standing. "This was to'alley noh in the show, geean' attacked baie Romulans," he said. "Aie'm goinna wander offa yar univarse. Haa fun." 

(Translation--> This was totally not in the show, [you] getting attacked by Romulans. I'm going to wander off of your universe. Have fun.)

Riz Nephtali looked at the Romulan ships through the view screen and waved her rather nasty looking phaser around, aiming at nothing. "You're just going to drop us here then alone? We're under attack!"

At the moment, the Okomfo seemed fine. The Romulans hadn't noticed it. They were firing on Deep Space Nine, pulling the -Federation- into this little skirmish, but his parents were down there. 

Alex popped his neck. "Yar the Amorphi aa Defense, eh?" he said to her. 

"Oh." Riz put the phaser back into her morph. "I knew that. Guys, we have an -entire army- and we're going to have to figure out exactly what we're going to do with the UNIVERSE!" 

"I suppose one doesn't take over an entire Quadrant without making a few enemies." Garak said. "We certainly have our work cut out for us,"

"An' yeh goh yarsalves a nice new dimensional traveler aa deal with. Ee's allergic aa me annieway, holy waaer an' stuff. -Bye-." And Alex splash-teleported out. 

(Translation--> And you've got yourselves a nice, new dimensional traveler to deal with. He's allergic to me anyway, holy water and stuff. Bye!) 

"We've got -what- traveler?!" Kaleb said. 

Over the com, a million sounds all layering over each other all at once: "Iskaezerak faemass" "Chegequiy ksaspuahliwah" "Aruncati armele" "iisqat al'aslihat alkhassat bik"-- 

"That was actual Arabic," Bashir said,

More layers. Whispers. Even through the com system, he could feel the weird effect of it all. It sounded like the same effect as Keedo's commands had been, but a different voice, stronger, more sinister. "Silah" "Drop your weapons" "nuHmey yIchagh 'ej yIjegh!" And more languages. 

"We're going to have to train to resist that," Garak said, frowning. 

"I got this, I'm basically immunish sort of. I have LOTS of training." Kaleb said, struggling through it and going over to the panel, "I can fire this... with effort... but we weren't firing." 

"I don't feel anything?" Riz Nephtali said. "I don't know -what- you're going on about." How -did- Changelings pick up on language? This would certainly give Odo something to get his mind off of what had happened.

Garak blinked. "You mean to tell me that Kaleb's universe brought with it its own metaphorical syphilitic conundrums, and this ship has two of the very few people who can handle it?" He looked pleased with that idea. 

"Smallpox one way, syphilis the other way, depends on who's got the bigger guns, but yeah, pretty much." said Kaleb. 

The com turned on, broadcasting to everyone in the area. Mixed Universes indeed. If the bits he'd looked up about vampires in literature were suddenly extremely relevant--that was very definitely Count Vlad Dracula... wutao. In a tattered, slightly outdated Cardassian uniform.

"Is this "people coming back from the dead" going to be a typical thing we need to worry about now?" Garak asked, a little too nonchalantly.

"Yup." said Kaleb. "There's a trick to it, and apparently, whoever killed that guy did it wrong."

"I think I did it quite right the first time," Garak said. 

The room went quiet for a second to the point where they could hear the fan blowing. 

"FIRST time?" Bashir said. Oh dear what had he gotten himself into? Riz Nephtali seemed just as concerned. 

"Judging by the outfit, and the -state- of the outfit, that would be Justice Procal," Garak said. 

"Which would make you VAN HELSING." Kaleb said, like that was completely normal. "Fuck I love this universe." 

The part where that got Bashir wondering if that made him Dr Seward or not and who that would make Mina and Lucy and everyone else-- Plot? Protagonist Status? 

He'd just gotten himself all tangled up in the biggest, most bizarre story yet.


End file.
